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THE EARTH
BENEATH OUR FEET

By ALICE E. WILSON
Illustrated by C. E. Johnson

The story of the earth upon which
we live is a very exciting one. Many
geologists have* spent their lives study-
ing the rocks of the earth to learn the
stories they have to tell of all the
things that have happened since the
earth was formed.

In The Earth /ieneath Our Feet Miss
Wilson tells the^e stories in a sl\le
and manner which will appeal to
children. The information is authen-
tic and up-to-date, ft will make read-
ers of lliis delightful hook more keenly
aware of the wonders of the world
around them.

The first part of the hook describes
how the rocks of the earth were
formed; how mountains were thrown
up; how r the plains, rivers, caves and
seas of the earth were carved out; and
how all of these are always changing.

The second part describes the four
ages of the earth, showing how these
stories may be read in the rocks oi
seashore, mountain and plain. The
last part oi the book tells the stories
of the earth's treasures: gold, copper,
tin, oil and gas, coal, iron, water and
salt.

Here ill! a book which is both enter-
taining arid instructive; a book which
will stimulate* in every reader a new
injhe earth beneath

THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

ALICE E. WILSON

Born at Cobourg, Ontario, in the
Eighties, Alice Wilson is the daughter
of the late Richard Wilson, and grand-
daughter of William Kingston, who
was head of the Mathematics and
Geology Department of Victoria Uni-
versity, then located at Cobourg.

She spent a happy childhood with
her two brothers. Their free outdo'or
life boating on Lake Ontario and
camping in the north provided an
informal education of lasting value.

Miss Wilson received her formal
education at Cobourg Collegiate Insti-
tute, Victoria College, Toronto, and
the University of Chicago, where she
took n post graduate Ph.D. degree in
geology. She was on the staff of the
Geological Survey of Canada for
nearly forty years, and was ranked as
a full geologist at the time of her
retirement in 1946.

A Fellow of the Geological Society
of America and of the Royal Society
of Canada, Miss Wilson has had prac-
tical experience in -geological field
work, and has published a number ol
geological maps and scientific papers.
In 1935 she was made a Member of
the Order of the British Empire, as
the woman longest ii; Government
Scientific service. She r; now acting
as consultant in petroleum geology.

THE
EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

by
ALICE E. WILSON

Illustrated by

C. E. JOHNSON

TORONTO

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
OF CANADA LIMITED

1947

Copyright, Canada t 1947

by
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED

All rights reserved no part of this book may be reproduced in any

form without the written permission of the publisher.

Mimeographing or reproducing mechanically in any other way passages

from this book without the written permission of the publisher is an

infringement of the copyright law.

Printed in Canada

*v

The Hugh Heat on Printing Ho*e9 Limited
Toronto

DEDICATION

TO ALL BOYS AND GIRLS

who walk and run and jump on the Earth t
this book is dedicated,

To tell you what you are walking upon,

To tell you how our Earth came to be what it is,

To tell you how it is changing now, and why,

To tell you how very old it is,

To tell you it is not the hills but the sea that is everlasting,

WARNING

N.B. This book is like maple sugar. Read just a little
at one time. Take too much and you want never to
see it again. Take a small piece and you like it. You
want more.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I WOULD LIKE here to express my gratitude for
the time and thought given to the book by Doctors
F. J. Akock, H. Bostock, J. F. Caley, H. C.
Cooke, D. Leechman, F. H. McLearn, T. L.
Tanton and M. E. Wilson, geologists, palaeon-
tologist, palaeobotanist and anthropologist. Each
made a critical reading and proffered suggestions
regarding the section or sections of the book in
which he is a specialist. I feel greatly privileged
to have been able to have the advice of these men.

1 would like to thank Miss M. C. Melburn who
for a number of years has taught science to
children of the age for which this book is written.
She read and criticized the whole book and made
suggestions from the angle of the presentation to
boys and girls.

I also owe a special debt to gratitude to Doctor
Grace A. Stewart, of Ohio State University. The
book was originally designed as a joint effort. She
has given me a number of ideas and suggestions
and has critically read Part One.

CONTENTS
THE PROLOGUE
PART I OUR EARTH AS WE KNOW IT

CHAPTER PAGE

I. OUR EARTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE . 6
II. OUR EARTH'S ROCK FOUNDATIONS . 10

III. MOUNTAINS COME AND MOUNTAINS

Go 15

IV. PLAINS COME AND PLAINS Go . .26

V. THE-TWINS-THAT-ARE-EVERYWHERE . 34

VI. RIVERS AND THEIR VALLEYS . . 42

VII. CAVES AND CAVERNS . . .56

VIIL THE SEA 66

THE INTERLUDE

PART II OUR EARTH IN THE PAST

A Story in Stone

INTRODUCTION How THE STORY is WRITTEN 93

I. LONG, LONG AGO PAGE ONE . . 99

II. OLDEN TIME PAGE Two . .111

III. MIDDLE TIME PAGE THREE . .126

IV. JUST-BEFORE-NOW PAGE FOUR . 140

PART III THE EARTH A TREASURE
STOREHOUSE

INTRODUCTION . . . .161

I. GOLD 165

II. COPPER 181

III. TIN 190

IV. OIL AND GAS 199

V. COAL 217

VI. IRON 234

VII. WATER 255

VIIL SALT 268

[NDEX 285

THE PROLOGUE

Beauty born of law!

As when a dull grey stone

Tossed by an urchin,

Winged by force,

Lightly leaps from wave to wave,

Gently dipping, bird-like, curving low,

Scatters shining drops ere it falls

Forever to oblivion.

ANONYMOUS

"HEY, THERE! I'll show you/' shouted Jim, slithering
down the cliff and running across the beach.

"I know why you can't skip them," he added breath-
lessly, stooping to pick up a small flat grey pebble which
he threw lightly over the surface of the lake.

"Five times/' counted Betty, who stood beside Tom.

"I can beat you," she boasted. Opening her hand she
chose a smooth flat pebble a little larger than the others
and threw it 'underhand'. For Betty and Jim lived by
the lake and had skipped stones ever since they could
remember.

And Betty did beat Jim, by one. Her stone skipped
six times.

Tom stood watching. Tom had lived in the city. The
lake and skipping stones were new to him. He tried
again. One skip.

"You haven't the right stones," said Jim. "Let me
see them."

Tom opened his hand. Stones of all shapes were
there, wet and sparkling and pretty.

1

2 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

"They're no good," said Jim. u You need flat grey
ones."

" Why?" asked Tom.

"I don't know," said Jim. "They skip better. Look
at Betty's."

Betty opened her hand full of flat, dull, grey stones,
and held them beside Tom's sparkling ones. The stones
looked very different side by side. Tom's were wet,
round, and coloured. Betty's were flat and dull but they
were the kind to skip.

u Why are stones so different?" asked Tom. Neither
Betty nor Jim could tell him.

"Dad," asked Betty that night. "Why are stones
different?"

"I don't know," answered Dad. "Are they?"

"Yes," said Jim, looking up from a book. "You have
to use grey ones to skip, and lots of others are round,
and red, or green, or white."

"Yes, that's true," said Dad. "But I don't know
why."

A week later Tom was back at school in the city. He
had to write a composition on summer holidays, and
thought of the stones.

"Why have stones different colours?" he asked the
teacher.

"Have they?" answered the teacher. "I don't know."

"Yes, you have to use flat, grey ones to skip," replied
Tom.

Then Friday night came. Tom, Jim and Betty, to-
gether again, forgot about the different stones until
Saturday morning. Racing down to the shore they
took a short cut through an old quarry, and almost ran

THE PROLOGUE 3

into a man, with a pack on his back. He was tapping at
the rocks with a queer-shaped hammer.

Something clicked in Jim's brain.

"Say, mister," he asked suddenly. "Why are stones
different?"

"Are they?" said the geologist, for such he was. He
paused to straighten his back and looked at the three.
Now, a geologist is a person who tries to find out all
he can about the Earth.

"Yes, they are," he answered himself.

"Some are flat and some are chunky," Jim continued.

"Yes," admitted the geologist. "So they are. Did you
ever see these?" he asked, holding out a piece of the
dull grey stone which he had just chipped from the
rock. In it was a little creature turned to stone. It had
a head, a body and a tiny tail, and looked a little like
a crab.

"What is it?" asked Betty shyly, standing on one
foot.

The man handed it to her and watched her thin eager
face.

"That is a trilobite," he answered. "There is noth-
ing quite like it living now. It was a very distant cousin
of the crab."

"Was it alive?" asked Betty, her eyes wide with sur-
prise.

"Yes," said the man.

"I have seen pieces of things like that," said Jim.
The boys took it in their hands in turn.

"How did it get here?" they asked.

"That," said the geologist, "is almost the same story

4 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

as the reason stones are different. That little animal
was once alive in the sea."

"Alive in the sea !" they all shouted, and then were
silent.

"But, how did it get here?" asked Jim slowly.

"I will tell you," the man replied.

The geologist took the knapsack from his back and
sat down on a granite boulder on the edge of the lime-
stone quarry. Betty and the boys sat around in front of
him. On one side of them the sun was shining on the
blue water of the lake. Above them the sky was blue,
with white floating clouds. In moist cracks between the
great layers of rock grew the green, green moss.
Around the scattered piles of loose stone at the edge
of the quarry tumbled the sweet-smelling stalky clover.
The dying blue bugloss grew up among it, faded, but
still as straight as soldiers. A brilliant mass of purple
asters shoved aside a bunch of withering grass. The
wind fitfully lifted Betty's hair.

And this is what the geologist told them.

PARTI
OUR EARTH AS WE KNOW IT

The earth is round, and like a ball
Seems swinging in the air;

Water and land upon the face

Of this round world we see;

The land is man's safe dwelling place,

But ships sail on the sea.

"The Earth" S. G. GOODRICH

CHAPTER I

OUR EARTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE

OUR EARTH is a great ball, not quite round, but nearly
so, made up of continents and oceans; the continents
made up of mountains and plains. But our Earth was
not always as we know it now.

The very Earth itself tells us the story. It is written,
literally carved, on its rocks like writing on the pages
of a book. The story tells us why there are now broad
lands in some places and wide oceans in others, why and
when the mountains rose up from the plains, why rivers
are where they are, what made the waterfalls and
canyons, and many other things.

All these things did not just appear, presto, like
magic! Behind each of these common everyday things
there is a story of great happenings. Sometimes the

OUR EARTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE 7

story runs slowly, sometimes it moves at a dizzy, ter-
rifying speed.

THE INSIDE OF OUR EARTH

On the inside our Earth is hot and heavy, but wheth-
er solid or liquid, who knows? Some think one thing
and some the other. We cannot go very far into it to
find out. The deepest mine does not go down much
more than a mile. Oil wells have been drilled as deep
as three miles. But even three miles is not very far.
For the Earth is 8,000 miles through the centre, if you
could cut it like an apple through the core.

How do we know that the Earth is hot inside? Per-
haps you know some of the reasons. Hot molten lavas
come bursting out from volcanoes. Hot springs spout
out in fountains, or ooze from the Earth in many
places. There are some in Yellowstone National Park,
United States, in New Zealand, in Iceland and in many
other places in the world. And, again, the deeper men
go into mines the hotter it grows. So, no doubt about
it ! The Earth is very hot inside.

How do we know that the Earth is heavy inside?
Men have instruments with which they can measure
its weight. It is too complicated to tell about here. But
it is known that the inside of the Earth is much heavier
and more dense than the outside.

THE OUTSIDE OF THE EARTH

On the outside our Earth is cold and solid, and very
uneven. Some parts are high, like the continents, and
some parts are very low, like the beds of the oceans.

Wherever you may live, look at your map. I hope

8 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

you have one. If you have not, look inside the covers
of this book. You see, there are six continents : Eurasia
(Europe and Asia), Africa, Australia, North America,
South America, and Antarctica. Eurasia is the largest,
and Australia is the smallest. Antarctica is at the South
Pole. It is almost completely covered by a great ice
sheet or glacier, only the mountain-tops stick up above
the ice. It is not shown on our map, because no people
live there, though a number have explored it, Scott,
Amundsen and Byrd.

And then, there are the oceans five of them: the
Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, Antarctic and Indian oceans.
They are all joined. There is much more ocean on the
Earth than there is land. Almost three-fourths of our
Earth's surface is ocean.

The great bays of the oceans are sometimes called
seas. The Mediterranean is one that you read much
about in history. It lies between Europe and Africa.
There is the North Sea between the British Isles and
Scandinavia, the Behring Sea between Alaska and Rus-
sia, and the Caribbean Sea between North America and
South America. There are many more. Look at your
map and see how many you can find.

Why are there continents in some places, and oceans
in others? Some men think that when the hot Earth
cooled it shrank. The outside wrinkled like the skin
on an old dried orange or apple. They think the wrin-
kles on the Earth are the higher parts or the continents,
and the lower places between the wrinkles are the ocean
beds. Others think that the continents are high because
they are made of lighter rock (and they are), and that
the oceans are low because beneath them is a heavy

OUR EARTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE 9

dense rock (and there is). But no one knows all
about it yet. Later I will tell you of some of
the other ways in which men explain the continents
and the oceans. First I want to tell of the surpris-
ing things we do know, about how our Earth was
made and to find how very long it has taken for our
Earth to become what it is now.

CHAPTER II

OUR EARTH'S ROCK FOUNDATION

(There are two kinds of rock)

DID YOU ever take a motor-car trip? Or, perhaps you
have gone on a train journey. Almost everywhere you
see rock sticking out from beneath the soil. Here it is
in great cliffs, there it is flat, farther on it is in the bank
of a river, or, in another place a little lies in the bed of
a brook.

There is just one kind of country where you will not
see rock, sooner or later. That is when you cross a
great plain. When you get thirsty driving over the dusty
plain, perhaps you get out at a farmhouse for a drink.
The farmer's wife will bring you a glass of cool fresh
water from a pump. The man who made that well bored
his drill down through the soil right into the rock it-
self, until he found water. It had gathered in the cracks
of the rock. And so, even beneath the plain there is
rock. It is not seen because it is covered by soil.

The truth is rock everywhere forms the hard crust
of the Earth. It is on the surface in some places. It is
slightly covered with soil in some places. And it is deep-
ly buried in some places. But there it is.

Do you know that all the rock of the Earth belongs
to one of two great groups rock that has been melted,
or rock that was laid in sea-bottom ?

10

OUR EARTH'S ROCK FOUNDATION 11

MELTED ROCK

Rock melted ! Yes, it is true ! But it needs a terrific
heat to melt it !

Have you ever seen a volcano, or even a movie pic-
ture of one? If you have, you know what rock looks
like when it is melted. The lava, thick like molasses,
flows down the mountain-side. Lava cools quickly in the
air, and forms a glassy material, not clear like window
glass, but dark, shiny and brittle, with sharp edges
when broken. Such is lava.

But there is another story about melted rock. Some-
times, deep down in the heart of the Earth, the hot
melted rock pushes up towards the surface but cannot
reach it. There is no way open. As it works up and up,
it cools slowly, very slowly and finally, while still below
the surface it becomes solid rock. This rock cooled
slowly far below, is not smooth and shiny but is made
up of many particles or grains.

What happerts if you boil toffee too long? When it
cools it is not smooth as toffee should be, but is sugary.
Grains of sugar ! They are crystals crystals of sugar.
Look at them carefully with a magnifying glass, if you
have one. All the crystals have the same colour, and
even more surprising, they all have the same shape, ex-
cept when broken.

Now the hot, thick, melted rock forms grains, too,
when cooled far down in the Earth. These grains or
crystals are minerals. In the slow cooling, silently and
mysteriously, every crystal of each mineral takes on
the same shape and the same colour. There are many
different minerals in the rock. So there are many, many
crystal shapes and colours.

12 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

So, these slowly-cooling rocks are called the 'crys-
talline' rocks. They are massive, immense and very
strong. When broken they make great irregular bould-
ers. Even smaller pieces will still be irregular, all shapes
and sizes. Even the little pebbles will be uneven and
made up of various mineral crystals.

Probably the melted rock which you know best is
granite. It has several minerals : quartz, feldspar, mica,
and maybe hornblende. The quartz is whitish and oily-
looking; the feldspar is white or pink; the mica is dark
and shiny; and the hornblende is black.

Most crystals are very, very small and have several
sides. Some of them have many sides. You will need to
get your magnifying glass for this. Each tiny side
is something like a mirror. It will throw back light, like
sun shining on water. That is why pebbles from these
rocks are bright and sparkling. That is the kind of peb-
bles Tom picked up. They are beautiful, but do not
'skip' well.

But all melted rocks, whether they have cooled quick-
ly, or cooled slowly, are called 'igneous' rocks. 'Ignis'
is the Latin word for 'fire'. And it certainly needs fire
to melt rock !

SEA-LAID ROCK

And then there is the other kind of rock ! Rock that
has been laid in sea-bottom! How do we know it was?
You will see later, when reading of the 'Footprints of
the Sea'. In some places this sea-laid rock is limestone.
Ih some places it is sandstone, just the usual sand on
the shore cemented into rock. Or, in some places it is
shale, just the mud that has collected on the floor of

OUR EARTH'S ROCK FOUNDATION 13

the sea, partly hardened into a weak kind of rock. Most
sea-laid rocks are dull-looking. They may be almost
white, grey, brick red, or even almost black. They never
sparkle, except perhaps some bits of the sandstone.

Do you live near a quarry, or near a shore where
some of this flat-lying rock is on the surface? Try to
break it. Give it a strong blow with a hammer, straight
down! Pretty tough, isn't it?

Well, try the other way, from the side, horizont-
ally.

It breaks ! Quite easily, in fact.

Why does it break one way more easily than the
other? Because it was laid in that way, flat on the sea
floor, layer upon layer.

Take that piece you have broken off. Break it into
smaller pieces. The edges are jagged, not round and
smooth like pebbles. But they are all flat. They would
'skip' on the water. Jim and Betty knew them. Try
them. When pebble edges are smooth and round, it
just means that the sharpness has been worn off by
jostling around with other pebbles.

ROCKS THAT ARE CHANGED

Sometimes both sea-laid rocks and melted rocks are
changed again. The hot melted rock in many places
has shoved and burned through the sea-laid rocks, and
burns or cooks the parts it touches. The changed rock
is called by a big name metamorphic rock. It is really
quite simple. It just means a rock that has changed its
form. Marble is a changed limestone, that is all.

14 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

So, there are the two great groups of rock that
which was once melted, and breaks into irregular
bright sparkling pieces ; and that which was laid in sea-
bottom and breaks into dull, flat pieces which wear into
round flat pebbles.

And remember, that the Earth's crust everywhere is
made up of rock, though in some places the rock is cov-
ered by soil.

CHAPTER III

MOUNTAINS COME AND
MOUNTAINS GO

They crowned him long ago

On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,

\Vith a diadem of snow.

LORD BYRON

WHAT MAKES mountains? For mountains, you know,
were not always where they are now. Some mountains
are very old and some are quite young. Another strange
thing is that the oldest mountains are not the highest.
Two of the oldest mountain regions in the world are the
Highlands of Scotland and the Laurentians in Canada
which lies across North America from the Atlantic
Ocean to Lake Winnipeg and north to Great Bear
Lake. These very old, old mountains are not nearly so

15

16 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

high as the Rockies or the Alps. And yet the Rocky
Mountains and the Alps are really quite young for
mountains.

How do I know? I will tell you. Or better, you can
find out for yourself, if you live near the mountains.
There is probably a quarry, on the mountain-side, some-
where near you. There nearly always is one. Go and
look at it. You will see the rock lies in layers. That, you
have learned, is because it was laid down, one layer flat
upon another, in the bottom of the sea. We must talk
more about that later. But you see, if this rock was
once sea-bottom it must have been very much lower and
not mountain-side at all. Yes, it was lower. What is true
of your mountain-side is true of all other mountains.
All the great mountain ranges of the Earth once were
not mountains at all.

WHERE ARE THE GREAT MOUNTAINS?

Where are the great mountains of the world, to-day?
Wherever you may live, look at your map. There are
mountains on all the continents and even on many
islands. In North America and South America they run
nearly north and south near the edges of the continents.
In Europe and Asia most of them run east and west.
Africa is near Europe and shaped something like North
America and South America. On the north of Africa
where it is near Europe the mountains run east and
west, too. In the rest of Africa the mountains are more
like those in North and South America. They run al-
most lengthwise, near the great oceans. The African
mountains are not so high as the Rocky Mountains and
the Andes. As to Australasia it is a little difficult to say.

MOUNTAINS COME AND MOUNTAINS Go 17

They are north and south on Australia itself, but every-
where around it there are so many drowned mountains.
All those islands are just drowned mountains, with their
tops above the ocean.

A MOUNTAIN CLIMB

Let us go for a walk up a mountain to see what it
really is! Here in the valley it is green. Beneath the
green is the soil of the fields. This path leads upward.
And there is forest beginning near the foot of the moun-
tain. We seem to be walking on woodsy-covered earth,
just as in any other walk through the forest. Don't trip
on those boulders along the path ! 1 wonder where they
came from? There is a break in the trees over there,
and here is a trail leading that way. Let us follow it
around the bend.

The trees are thinning out now, and there are bits
of cut limestone strewn along the trail. Yes, there is
the quarry, with its walls of layered rock. Well, one
thing seems certain. Here is some of the limestone that
has been laid under the sea.

Let us go back to the main path again. The trail is
getting rougher and steeper. There is less soil and more
boulders. There are side trails here and there, but let
us stick to the one we are on. It is narrower now, we
will have to go single file. Look! We are on the edge
of a cliff. We can see far down the valley .and over the
flat countryside. See all the farms down there ! And a
town I See the smoke from that crawling train! Right
beneath our feet is a great ridge of massive rock. It is
no longer the, layered rock, but the igneous type, hard
and strong, the kind that was once melted. You can

18 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

hardly split it even with a hammer. So, we see, our
mountain is not all made of layered rock. Crystalline
rock is part of the mountain, too.

There is much rock here, but also there are forests
on this mountain-side. If we did not follow the path,
we should be lost in the 'bush', at least on the lower
half of the mountain. In spite of the boulders and great
shoulders of rock there must be soil here, too, though
we cannot see much of it for the dead branches, moss,
dead leaves and rock. But the soil is here, caught in the
hollows between the great rocks.

So we have learned there is ordinary soil on the
mountain-side in which trees grow.

But it is getting late. We cannot climb to the top,
but we can look at the summit of our next mountain
neighbour with the field-glass. Can you see it?

What makes the mountain-top so jagged? It is rock,
all rock, sharp and steep. Not much soil there ! It could
not stay very well on that steep slope. Rain and melt-
ing snow would wash it down. There are no trees there
either. They could not grow without the soil, and, be-
sides it is cold for trees on mountain-tops.

What, then, are mountains ? They are masses of rock
piled high, sea-laid and igneous rock. They are steep
and rough. They have soil on the lower part, and in
the soil live growing plants and trees. Mountains, then,
are like the rest of the Earth, only they stand on end,
their peaks far above the green valleys.

MOUNTAINS COME AND MOUNTAINS Go 19

FROM WHERE DID THE MOUNTAINS COME?

The hills are shadows and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands ;
They melt like mist, and solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.

LORD TENNYSON

Why are these rocks piled up so steeply, above the
plains? How did the sea-laid rocks ever get there?
Were these mountains once at the bottom of the sea?
They were. You saw for yourself the layers of rock on
the mountain-side in the quarry.

All the wise men who have studied the rocks puzzled
and puzzled over that question. They measured the
thickness of the layered mountain rocks. Some worked
hard at measuring and comparing the rocks of the Alps.
Some worked in the Rocky Mountains, a few in South
America, a few in Africa. They wrote about it. They
gathered together and talked about what they had
found. And this is what they thought.

When the highest layered rocks now on the moun-
tains were below, on the bottom of the ocean, then the
lowest layered rocks must have been many feet below
the water.

Imagine seas where there are now mountains ! Look
at your map. The seas must have been in the broad val-
leys or troughs all up and down the continents, just
where we now have mountains ! There must have been
such a trough or valley along the margins of North
America and South America, and in those other coun-
tries, too. The ocean waters must have poured into
those valleys. They must have, because to-day there,

20 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

on the mountain-side, are the many thousands of feet
of layered rock.

It is true 1 Rock was laid on sea-bottom all over these
broad valleys just as long as the ocean filled them.

"But," you say, u that would not look like North
America and South America, nor Europe. It would not
be the right shape!"

But it was so. All the shores have changed. You and
I would not know a map of North America then. It
was so different.

The wise men pondered. How did the mountains
rise from the sea?

"That means that the continents rose or the oceans
sank!"

"Well," they said, "we know the solid bottom of the
ocean is really heavier than the land. So far so good!"

"Then," they thought, "the mountains have risen,
when the heavy floor of the oceans sank, and the ocean
water that had filled the former valleys drained out."

And that, some of the wise men thought, is what
happened! The continents rose when the oceans sank.
Things happened! The Earth was shaken to its core!
The sinking floor of the ocean shoved against the edges
of the land. Those rocks shoved the rocks farther in-
land, shoved and shoved. The continents were pushed
up until the wide sea-covered valleys were raised and
the sea-water ran out again to the great oceans, leav-
ing broad stretches of young sea-laid rocks that were
weak. The ocean floor sank farther. The rocks were
crushed and shoved still farther. The new sea-laid rocks
just crumpled up. They were piled up and up, as the
margins of the continents were pushed inland. The

MOUNTAINS COME AND MOUNTAINS Go 21

rock broke. It piled up on edge. Great pieces slid over
and buried other pieces. You know, if you live near a
mountain, because you can see them, the layers piled up,
sloping or shoved over one another.

It is true that long ago the Pacific Ocean did sink.
It drowned many of the islands. Such sinking sometimes
happens now. A very few years ago a little piece of the
floor of the Pacific Ocean dropped farther down, when
the earthquake shook Long Beach, California, and
caused a great amount of damage. Long ago the At-
lantic Ocean sank, too, but not so far. It is not so deep.
The Arctic Ocean and the Indian Ocean sank, and even
the much smaller Mediterranean Sea. It did not hap-
pen all at once, as I have told you, but bit by bit.

The Strange Doings of Continents

Later another thought was born. Cut up a map of
the world. Place the continents side by side, like pieces
of a jigsaw puzzle. South America fits right under the
sheltering bulge of Africa. Move North America a little
around the North Pole and it fits against Europe and
Asia. Cut off India and slide it down against the east
side of Africa. Place Antarctica, Australia and all the
other islands, those not too small to handle, to the
south and east of Africa and India.

They fit rather well. Think, then, of all the conti-
nents as one huge continent. In the chinks that do not
quite fit, think of shallow seas upon this one great con-
tinent.

So, it once stood, one man thought a German,
named Wegcncr. Many others agree with him. Wegen-
er risked and lost his life trying to find out about this
and other questions referring to it. Wegener died dur-

22 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

ing a Greenland winter, measuring the growth and con-
ditions of glacial ice, and the possible movement of
separation of Greenland from North America. Others
are still trying to find out whether his theory could be
true.

Wegener thought, then, that all land was once one.
Then the continents, as we now know them, floated
apart !

Continents float! Well, not exactly, certainly not in
the waters of the oceans. Then how did they 'float' ?

We know that the rocks beneath the oceans are heav-
ier than the continents. We know, too, how glaciers
move. They do not flow. They re-crystallize. The great
weight from higher up makes heat. A tiny liquid film
forms over one end of the crystal, on the side of least
pressure, and then the liquid film freezes again, but it
has moved a tiny bit along its own crystal. So each crys-
tal moves on, film by film, by the freezing and thawing
of one after another of each tiny particle of each ice
crystal, though always, the whole great mass is solid.
This sometimes is called 'solid flow'.

So also solid rock, if crystalline, can move under
great, unequal pressure. When pressure is equal on all
sides the rock is rigid. Thus, thought Wegener, the
continents moved with their bases in a heavy dense rock
beneath, which itself was anchored in the solid core of
the Earth. So, he thought, North America and South
America moved from Europe and Africa. So, Asia and
India moved together. Antarctica moved west, and Af-
rica moved from India and Asia and all moved from
Australia, and Australia itself moved, too.

And, as the Americas moved westward in a century-

MOUNTAINS COME AND MOUNTAINS Go 23

slow ploughing through the heavy rocks below, their
western margins were wrinkled up into mountains. As
Asia, India and Africa pressed together the long line
of mountains, the Alps and Himalayas, were crushed
up between them. Northward and westward they all
moved, but some perhaps moved faster than others.

Why did they move ? What would move them ? The
mighty but slow force of the turning Earth. As the
Earth turns through the ages it bulges at the Equator
where the speed is greatest. So the continents would
move out towards the place of greatest speed, move
westward and northward.

Could this be so ? It will take many observations and
many years to prove it right or wrong.

But that is not all ! Whichever way the mountains
were formed, certainly things happened! Some of the
rock, always hot down in the heart of the Earth, melted
and welled up, pouring into the cracks, sometimes be-
neath the surface, sometimes out over the surface. Or
the molten rock belched out as terrible volcanoes. As it
cooled, the melted rock hardened or 'froze', like cooled
toffee. This did not happen just once, but many times.

And so, probably in one of these ways, the great
mountains of the Earth were formed. They are made
up of melted rock and of sea-laid rock.

This is the story of the younger mountains like the
Rocky Mountains, the Andes, the Alps and others.

THE VERY OLD MOUNTAINS

It is very difficult to read the story of those very
much older mountains, the Laurentians in Canada, the
Adirondacks in New York State, for instance. The Ad-

24 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

irondacks really are a border part of the Laurentians.
These mountains are all so very old. The tops of these
old, old mountains are all worn off, so they are not so
high now as they once were. But men found that they,
too, were not always mountains, because there are lay-
ered sea-laid rocks among them: sandstone and lime-
stone and shale. It was all so long ago that the oceans
and continents may have been quite different. Scotland
is still surrounded by the ocean that may have wrinkled
up the Highlands, but some parts of North America
where those ancient mountains stand are now far in-
land. Men are still wondering. That is a question for
you to think about and work about, when you are older.
It is a big question and worth while.

MOUNTAINS MADE BY VOLCANOES

And then there are mountains that have grown and
grown from little volcanoes to big volcanoes. There are
active volcanoes and dead ones. Active volcanoes belch
out smoke and steam, and sometimes lava. Lava is real-
ly melted rock. It pours out of an opening, called a
crater, at the saucer-shaped top of the volcano. Some-
times the lava wells up out of cracks on the sides. It
cools or .'freezes' on the outside of the volcano. First
it builds a little cone-shaped hill, then it piles more lava
on top of the cooled lava, and builds up higher and
higher. The mountain you see in so many pictures of
Japan, Fuijama, grew in that way. There is a very
beautiful mountain in Chile, Osorno, just like that, and
there are many others in the world.

Sometimes a big volcano explodes. Then things hap-
pfcn! Terrible things, if there are people living on its

MOUNTAINS COME AND MOUNTAINS Go 25

sides, or in the valleys! Melted rock bursts from the
sides of the volcano, and blazing gas and hot ashes are
hurled into the air, and the ash falls all around burying
everything. Some of the ash is shot high above the
Earth and carried far away on the upper currents of
air. Ash from a volcano has been carried all around
the world.

Sometimes a volcano will be quiet for years, then
there is a rumble and trembling of the Earth, and it
will burst out again, just like Vesuvius did in Italy. It
came to life in a hurry. Steam burst out and blew off
the top of the mountain. Ashes and lava covered the
country for miles around, burying people and whole
towns.

And then there are dead volcanoes, dead for years
and years, perhaps hundreds of years, perhaps thou-
sands of years, or much more. There is volcanic ash
in a great many of the old rocks. Some rock in Wales
has shells right in the volcanic ash, showing that the
ashes fell into the sea. Mount Royal at Montreal,
Canada, is the core of an old volcano. There are old
volcanoes in Yellowstone Park, Wyoming. And the
hot geysers there show it is still hot beneath. There
were even volcanoes in the very, very old rocks of the
Laurentians, because there are old lavas there.
# * *

And then there are mountains which are not made
the same way at all. They were really plains at first

CHAPTER IV

PLAINS GOME AND PLAINS GO

Now THE MOUNTAINS stand high. Their peaks in the
clouds seize and hold our imagination. But the moun-
tains cover only a small part of the Earth. The broad
vast parts of the Earth are the plains. They cover the
greater surface of all continents. There, on the plains,
is where people live. The cities of the plains ! They are
the great cities of the Earth.

In the days of old, what people sometimes call 'the
brave days of old*, capital cities were built on moun-
tains, or in high places. Can you think why? The ene-
mies of their people could not get at them easily. But
even then the rich cities were on the plains. Why? One
reason is that they were the centres of great farming
areas. Where land is fertile, there people must live.

26

PLAINS COME AND PLAINS Go 27

Another reason is that some of the cities of the plains
were the centres of the great trade roads, whether trade
was carried on by camel or by ship. But trade has chang-
ed. Camels and sailing ships have given place to trains,
motor trucks, and great oil-driven ships. To-day some
of the great cities on the plains are also ports. London
is both a city of the plains and a great port. New York
and Montreal, the two greatest ports of North America,
are not cities of the plains, but Chicago is. Chicago is
also a lake and river port, but it began as a city of the
plain.

The cities of the plains are often factory centres. The
electricity used to run the factories may come from wat-
erfalls in the upland or mountain rivers, but it is cheap-
er to carry electricity to the factory than to carry goods
over mountains. So the factories are on the plains.

A plain is not always level like the surface of a pond.
It may be uneven. Some plains may have low hills.
Others have long ridges of rock. Some plains are low.
Some plains are high above sea-level.

There are many plains. In the United States there is
a plain on the east, sloping to the Atlantic Ocean, a
great plain of the Central States drained by the Mis-
sissippi River, and others in the west. In Canada there
are plains in large parts of Ontario, in the wide-spread
Prairie Provinces, and in the north country where the
cariboo range. In Europe there is the great plain of
Northern Russia. There are the desert plains of Af rica t
and the veldts of South Africa. There are broad plains
in South America, such as the great wheat fields and
cattle ranges of Argentina. A large part of the centre
of Australia is a plain.

28 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Why are these great stretches of the Earth plains?
How did they come to be so level? Just as the moun-
tains were not always mountains so the plains were not
always plains. Plains are made by water; by running
water in rivers, by the waves of lakes and ocean; in a
few places by volcanoes pouring out lava ; and in a few
places by the pushing up of great blocks of the Earth's
crust.

RIVER-MADE PLAINS

Do you live near a river, where you can see its val-
ley? If you do not, just look at a fast little stream near
you. See how it washes its sides away, then spreads the
sand and mud along its bed. A large river does exactly
the same thing. It may take a long time, but it does it
The rather flat part of the river valley gets wider and
wider. Sometimes, like the Mississippi and the rivers
which flow into it, the river overflows its banks and
spreads the sand and mud far and wide on the top of
the valley it forms. The Nile in Egypt does that, too,
and many other rivers. The river makes a plain grow.
Such land is very fertile, as you know if you live on a
river plain.

WAVE-MADE PLAINS

But perhaps you live by a seashore, on the California
coast, south of Monterey, or on one of the Great
Lakes. For lakes though smaller really work as hard
as the ocean. Stand up high on the cliffs and look down.

There is a narrow ribbon of shore away down there
between the cliffs and the sea. The sea beats against
those great cliffs and breaks off pieces of them. On
quieter days the tide coming in and out spreads the
stones, the sand and the mud along the strip of shore.

PLAINS COME AND PLAINS Go 29

The strip becomes wider, and wider, and the level
stretch with a gentle slope grows farther and farther
out under the water.

Beaches like this are very narrow plains. But after a
long, long time the wave-worn strip of beach grows
wider and wider still. It becomes not a beach but a wide
plain. The cliffs, far inland now, are hills. The rivers
coming from those hills, lend a hand. Together the
waves and the rivers have made a great, gently sloping,
almost level stretch of land between the sea and the in-
land hills. This is called a coastal plain. All this time the
ocean has been smoothing out its floor along the coast.
Finally a great plain stretches from the hills away in-
land far out under the sea, part of it on land and part
beneath the sea.

Perhaps you live in the east Atlantic States and know
some part of the great plain that slopes from the Ap-
palachian Mountains to the sea. Perhaps you live in
England where the plain slopes from the mountains of
Wales to the North Sea. Perhaps you live Well, there
are quite a number of other places you may live and be
on such a plain. It would really take too long to name
them all.

Then something happens, not suddenly, but slowly.
The land begins to rise, up and up. The shore of the
sea moves farther and farther out. Slowly it moves.
The land still rises! The shore still moves farther out!
And there is a great plain ! There are such plains now
hundreds of miles from the sea. That has happened
many times since the Earth began. How do we know?
The base of the plain is made of sea-laid rock. Perhaps
you live in Wisconsin. If so, you are living on a plain

30 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

which once was beneath the sea. Perhaps you live in
the Prairie Provinces of Canada. They, too, were rais-
ed from beneath the sea. It happened all along Lakes
Erie and Ontario. Parts of these plains in some places
are drowned by their lakes, but there they are, still
plains beneath the water.

PLAINS THAT BECOME MOUNTAINS

Now as soon as a great plain like this is lifted up,
immediately, the rivers get to work. They begin to
pull it down. They wear valleys here. They wear val-
leys there. Finally the valleys meet and a piece of the
high plain is left standing alone like a mountain. It real-
ly is one kind of mountain. The Catskills of New York
were made in this way. So were the Helderbergs of
New York. They are what is left of a high plain. The
Cotswolds and Chiltern Hills of England and quite a
number of mountains are made in that way. They are
parts of high plains not yet worn down.

HIGH PLAINS BECOME LOW PLAINS

The winds help the rivers to wear down the plains.
Hand in hand they wear the high plain away until it is
cut into sections. In the west of the United States these
small bits that are left are called 'mesas'. They are flat
on top because they were part of a plain. 'Mesa' is the
Spanish word for 'table*. In Arizona some of the In-
dians live on these flat-topped mesas.

But the rivers, helped by the winds, never stop work-
ing until the mesas, too, are quite worn down, and be-
hold! You have another plain, a low level plain this
time. It has been worn down from a high plain by the
rivers and wind.

PLAINS COME AND PLAINS Go 31

So the rivers work and work, wearing the land away.
They make two kinds of plains: first, in their own val-
leys by wearing down their sides and spreading the
muds and sands over the broadened valley; second, by
wearing down high plains into low plains. And the
oceans work and work, wearing down their shores, mak-
ing beaches and spreading the muds and sands over
their floors, to form a part of a larger plain if the land
rises. They just never stop working, night and day,
rivers and oceans.

The Circle

This story really goes around in a circle. The river
carries sand and mud and rock from the mountains and
spreads them along the shore. The waves break off the
edges of the shore and add sand and mud and rock to
A*hat the rivers have brought down. The shore widens,
the floor of the sea becomes level. Then it rises into a
high plain. Then the rivers begin all over again. That
is called a 'cycle', which means it is repeated over and
over again like the turn of a wheel.

During the time the plain is high it is called a 'pla-
teau 9 . That is the French word for a 'high flat place'.

MOUNTAIN PLAINS

But there is another kind of high plain or plateau.
It is hard to know whether to call it a plain or a moun-
tain. You know now how mountains are made. Some-
times the force of the mountain-building movement is
so great that the crust of the Earth is twisted and pull-
ed, until it is broken up into great blocks. Two blocks
may fall, and as they fall, squeeze up another between
them. That squeezed-up block will make a great flat-

32 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

topped plateau, too. There are a number of plateaux
formed that way in the United States, in Oregon, and
parts of Nevada and in California. Immediately the
rivers and winds get to work to wear down the edges.
By and by they look like any other mountains, but they
were not formed in exactly the same way. They were
plateaux first. (The V at the end of 'plateaux' is not
a mistake, that is the way French words ending in *eau'
form their plural. )

LAVA PLAINS

There is still another kind of high plain or plateau,
the kind that has been made from lava. Down in South
America, in Peru, and thereabouts, there was once an
old mountain range, worn down pretty low, for moun-
tains. Farther inland the newer higher Andes were
pushed up, and many volcanoes began to awake. They
got very wide awake, indeed, and active, and poured
out lava, and poured it out. Not only did it come from
the saucer-shaped crater at the top, but the mountain-
sides burst open. Lava flowed down filling the valleys
until the old mountains nearer the coast were complete-
ly covered. Slowly the lava hardened, and now there is
a high plateau in Peru, covering the old mountains, and
nearly all made from lavas and other volcanic materi-
als. Rivers from the high plateau have cut through the
rock and revealed the old mountains buried by the later
lavas. There is another plateau like this along the Co-
lumbia River in Oregon, Idaho and Washington States.

So, besides the low plains made by the wearing down
and the levelling-off of rivers and oceans, there are
the plateaux or high plains that have been lifted up, the

PLAINS COME AND PLAINS Go 33

plateaux made by pushed-up blocks, and the plateaux of
lava.

So the mountains and the plains come and go.

It is not the hills that are everlasting but the sea!

CHAPTER V

THE-TWINS-THAT-ARE-EVERYWHERE

HERE is A RIDDLE! What are the Twins-that-are-
Everywhere? They were here, there and everywhere
when your grandparents were boys and girls, and when
their grandparents were boys and girls, and many hun-
dreds of years before, almost since the Earth was made.
They are still being born, now! Who or what are they?
They are sand and mud! Did you ever hear of any
place without them ? They are twins, really twins. They
even look alike sometimes, do they not? What are they
really?

When you were very little, you made mud-pies. You
poured water on some mud and stirred it with a stick,
or perhaps you just used your hands. What is this mud
you used for your mud-pies?

Do you have a garden? If you have, get a handful
of soil. Look at it carefully. Put a little into a glass of

34

THE-TWINS-THAT-ARE-EVERYWHERE 35

water and see what happens. Some of it will float on
top. Skim it off. Some of it will sink quickly. Leave it in
the bottom of the glass. And the rest, just muddy water,
pour carefully into another glass. Let it stand long
enough to dry out. Something is left in the bottom of
the glass, very tiny particles.

Now you have three things. One, the part that floats
is dead roots and leaves broken up very fine. There is
really only a very little. Two, the part that sank quickly
that is sand. Not much of it in your garden, I hope !
Too much of it is not good for your flowers. Three,
the part that made the water muddy, is clay. When it is
wet we call it mud.

SOMETHING ABOUT SAND

Let us look at the sand first. Shake it in the glass of
water. Hold the glass up to the light. The water is
clear. The sand is at the bottom. That is the first thing
we learn about sand. It is heavy, and sinks quickly to
the bottom, leaving the water clear.

Leave the sand in the water a few days, weeks, or
even months. It will not disappear. It remains the same.
That is the second thing we learn about sand. It does
not disappear or dissolve in the water.

But its colour! Look at it in the water. It is bright
and sparkling, and there are all sorts of beautiful col-
ours white, pink, red or purple. That is the third thing
we learn about sand. It is bright and sparkling and full
of colour.

SOMETHING ABOUT CLAY

Let us look at the clay. Put some of it, not too much,
in a glass of water. Shake well. It makes the water
*muddy\ doesn't it? If you have good eyes you will see

36 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

tiny specks floating around in the water. Look at it with
a magnifying glass. The particles do not float on top
like the specks of roots and leaves. They are heavier.
They float right down in the water. That, then, is the
first thing we learn about clay. It almost floats, but not
quite.

Let the glass of muddy water stand. The particles
slowly settle to the bottom. No matter how long it
stands the clay will not disappear into the water as salt
or sugar will. That is the second thing we learn about
clay. It will not disappear or dissolve in the water.

In time the water dries up. Look at the clay left in
the bottom of the glass. It is dull-looking, isn't it? Un-
less you live in New Brunswick, or Niagara, or Georgia
or some other place where the clay is a brick-red col-
our. In those places it is red because there is iron in it.
But even there it is a dull red. That is the third thing
about clay. It is dull in colour.

The twins, then, are alike in that neither of them dis-
solves in water. They differ in that sand is heavy though
bright and sparkling, and the clay almost floats, but is
a dull colour.

HOW SAND AND CLAY ARE MADE

From where did these strange everyday twins come ?
For they are strange, are they not, even if they are so
very common! Yet, they were being made when the
Earth was very young. They are being made to-day.

The Streams and Rivers Make Them

I saw sand and clay being made one day. I was walk-
ing up a trail on the side of a low mountain in Quebec.
Near the path was a large stone, all rounded at the

THE-TWINS-THAT-ARE-EVERYWHERE 37

corners, a boulder of coarse-grained rock, broken from
the hillside. It was quite sparkling in the sunshine. In a
ring around it on the ground were coarse bits which
had flaked off. Up there, in the winter it is very cold.
Each year, when the cold autumn rains fall on the
coarse boulder, the water freezes in the cracks. The ice
loosens the outside flakes which gradually fall off. On
the grourld these pieces look like coarse pebbly sand.
In the springtime the snow melts and floods down the
hill. The snow-water carries some of the coarse flakes
with it. The floods of another spring carry them to the
stream below the hill. They lie at the edge of the
stream. A thunderstorm may flood the stream. The
pebbly flakes are pushed a little farther downstream.
They bump against the bank and rest a year or two.
And so it goes, day after day, year after year.

But all this time something happens to the pebbly
flakes. They are becoming smaller and smaller. Part of
each flake disappears in the water, just like salt. And
there is salt and lime in those old rocks, and many
other things that will melt or dissolve in water. It takes
a long time, but it happens. Then the pebbly flakes fall
apart. They become smaller and smaller as they move
down the stream.

So the pebbly flakes are divided in three. First, the
salts are carried away, dissolved in the water. Second,
little particles that do not dissolve are broken off and
carried downstream, floating or almost floating in the
water; that is the clay. Third, the heavier bits that do
not dissolve are rubbed and scrubbed along the shore.
They jostle against one another, grinding off their edges
and corners. These particles are the sand.

38 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Almost every stream you look at is carrying mud and
sand to the sea. That is why the water looks muddy.
Such is the work of streams all over the Earth, to carry
the loose rock materials to the sea. They never rest.
The Mississippi River carries so much mud and sand to
the sea that it has built up a great delta at its mouth. So
has the Nile River, and the Mackenzie River. The
Amazon and St. Lawrence rivers carry their sand and
mud far out to sea. Their channels are deep. Their cur-
rents are strong.

The flakes I saw on the hillside that day will move
down to larger and larger streams until they reach the
Ottawa River, and then down the Ottawa for many
years to the St. Lawrence River. And then down, down
to the Atlantic Ocean. It will be a long time before
they reach the ocean, perhaps thousands of years, but
they will get there.

The Winds and the Rains Make Them

But not all of those pebbly flakes I saw that day will
get into the stream. In fact, my heavy boots tramped
some of them into the ground. Always the moisture in
the ground gets to work immediately upon the salt and
lime in such broken flakes, and they begin to change.
During summer, when there is less rain, they dry out.
Along comes a hot wind before a storm and blows them
along the side of the mountains, away from the stream.
The pieces scurry along tumbling over one another. A
rainstorm comes up and beats the flakes into the damp
ground. More of the salts, and minerals in them dis-
solve and each piece falls apart, just as in the water.
They dry out again, then again along comes the wind.

THE-TWINS-THAT-ARE-EVERYWHERE 39

Day after day the winds blow and blow. The coarser
heavier particles are rolled along the ground, they
bump against the rough places in their path, and stop
when the winds die. The finer particles are blown far
away. When the winds cease the finer bits lie just where
they are, far beyond the coarse heavy particles. And so,
the coarse pieces become finer, and the finer pieces be-
come still finer. And finally they are all sorted out. The
rain-water has carried the salts into the ground. The
very, very fine pieces, the clay, is blown far away. The
coarser sand is piled in dunes nearer the starting-point.
But this time the sand is not rounded by rubbing. It is
sharpened, and has edges, because when the wind hurls
sand grains, one against another, each sharp, heavy
piece just chisels off the sides of its neighbour.

So the pebbly pieces that are not carried into the
stream make sand and clay, too. The great sand dunes
of the Sahara desert, in Africa, have been formed in
this way. On the desert of Peru are great crescent dunes
of finer sand, sorted out from the coarser, heavier sand
on the floor of the desert.

The Ocean Makes Them

Sand and mud are being made in other ways. Do you
live near the ocean, or near one of the Great Lakes of
the world? I hope some of you do. The waves of the
ocean, particularly in storms, are breaking off bits of
rock which are slowly ground up. During heavy storms
the stones are hurled at the cliffs, breaking off still more
rocks. They, too, are slowly ground up, year after year.
The mineral salts are dissolved in the water, the lighter
tiny pieces float or almost float away, the heavier sand

40 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

is dropped nearer the shore, making sandy beaches. So

the lakes and oceans are making sand and mud.

* * *

So, now we have three ways in which sand and mud
are being made right under our eyes. In each case the
Twins come first from rock. The rock is split, by frost
or waves or by the dissolving of the salts in them. The
large pieces become smaller and smaller by the further
dissolving of the salts. The parts of the rock that can-
not be dissolved are carried away by streams or wind
or waves. The Twins-that-are-Everywhere are being
made now.

SAND AND MUD MADE LONG AGO

But not all the sand and mud on the Earth has been
made recently, or when your grandfather lived, nor
even since man has lived. We must look back, before
that, far back.

If you read on, in Part II, you will find the story of
the Great Rhythm of the Earth. Many times the sea
came up over the continents, and then went back again
to the ocean beds. As the sea came and went the rivers
changed. Every river, every ocean storm, every down-
fall of rain through all those many millions of years was
making sand and mud, all the time. They just never
stopped.

But something else was happening. At the same time
the oceans were working in another way. Each time as
the sea came up covering the sand and mud already ly-
ing on the continents it cemented some of the sand into
sandstone and some of the fine clay particles were press-
ed into shale. So, not all the sand and mud was left to
be carried by the streams or to be blown by the wind.

THE-TWINS-THAT-ARE-EVERYWHERE 41

So now we have it all. The sand and mud which is
being made to-day is added to that made during all the
many millions of years in the past.

Do you wonder that they are the Twins-that-are-
Everywhere, and that there is so much of them?

CHAPTER VI

RIVERS AND THEIR VALLEYS

The streams all flow into the sea

But the seas they never fill

Though the streams are flowing still.

Eccles. I, 7. (Moffat Translation)

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED why there are so many
rivers on the lands of the Earth? Why some are so
small and others so large? Where they begin and where
they end? Almost every boy and girl in North America
has seen at least one little river. If you live in the coun-
try you must know a stream that flows into a river. If
you live in the mountains you know how the mountain
brooks chatter down the slopes. Even if you live in the
city probably there is a large river flowing through it
or very near it.

RIVERS NEEDED BY MAN

From the earliest time man has used the rivers. Be-
fore there were roads, rivers were the highways for
travel and trade. Before there were trains there were
boats; boats that were poled along; boats that sailed;
or boats driven by a paddle wheel. Then there were
steamboats, and finally the great steamships of to-day.
In North America canoes were first used by the Indians.
And it was along the rivers that the early discoverers in
our country explored the land.

The first white men to go down the Mississippi River
were Frenchmen from French Canada. They had to

42

RIVERS AND THEIR VALLEYS 43

paddle miles westward, up the rivers flowing into the
St. Lawrence. When they could not go farther they pick-
ed up their canoes and carried them through the woods
to the next river. The French word for 'to carry 1 is
'porter 1 . So the places over which they carried their
canoes became 'portages'. Finally they found one of the
rivers which empties into the Mississippi and paddled
down it to the great 'father of waters 1 .

And now we travel quickly over the country by train
or automobile, and still more quickly through the air.
But boats still travel on river and lake, and a great deal
of the merchandise of the world is still carried on jpoats
down the rivers to the seaports.

RIVERS RUN TO THE SEA

Have you read Water Babies, by Charles Kingsley?
If you have not, read it. During a storm Tom saw the
eels and everything rushing past him. "Down to the
sea, 1 ' said Tom, "everything is going to the sea, and I
will go too. 11 And the same thing is true of all the
brooks, streams, little rivers and big rivers, too. All are
going to the sea.

Why do rivers flow to the sea? Well because that
is their work to carry all the waters of the Earth to
the sea. They flow to the sea because the sea is the
lowest place, and water always runs downhill. A river
along its course may twist and turn and flow in the op-
posite direction for some distance, but always it will
turn again and flow on to the sea.

"But all the water does not go to the sea, 11 you say.
"Water soaks into the ground, and there are swamps
and lakes. 11 Give it time and it, too, will get to the sea.
When rain falls, part of it soaks into the soil. But it

44 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

does not stay there. It often moves on below the ground
and if there is an opening it will flow out again as a
spring. The spring may join a river. Swamp water, too,
may join the water hurrying to the sea. Even the water
in the lake may get to the sea. Look at your map again.
Rivers carry the water down from one lake to another
lake, and then a larger river carries it down to the sea.
See for yourself on the map. The Nipigon River car-
ries the water of Lake Nipigon to Lake Superior, the
St. Mary River carries it to Lake Huron, the St. Clair
River carries it to Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River
carries it to Lake Erie, the Niagara River carries it to
Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence River at last car-
ries it to the sea.

There is only one condition in which water does not
flow to the sea that is, if it is below sea-level. Of
course it could not flow then because it would be flowing
uphill. It seems very odd but there are really places on
the continents which are lower than the sea, for ex-
ample, the water near the bottom of some of the deep
lakes. The floor of several of the Great Lakes of North
America is too deep for the water caught there to flow
up into the sea. Death Valley in California is lower
than the sea but of course there is not much water there
to flow out. When the water cannot flow out of small
seas or lakes on the land it becomes very salty. Great
Salt Lake in Utah is a very salty lake. So is the Dead
Sea in Palestine.

A RIVER IS BORN

Do you live on a farm with a little stream flowing
through it? Does the stream begin in a swamp back of
those fields, or, does it just begin in a ditch in the pas-

RIVERS AND THEIR VALLEYS 45

ture field? It gets a little bigger on this side of the field.
Do you know why? Some of the water that soaked into
the ground on that hill over there is coming out in a
spring, not bubbling, just slowly oozing out. It gradually
makes its way down to the stream. So it makes the
stream larger.

If you live near the mountains you will have to climb
up high to find out where the rivers are born away
up near the top, at the edge of the snow and ice. Per-
haps you can find a stream along the mountain-side
which runs not from the snow but out of a hole in the
rocks. It really started higher up in the snow but dis-
appeared into a crack, and is coming out again as a
spring.

But, you who live on a farm, where did the water
come from that began in the pasture ditch? Yes, from
the rain.

And, you who live in the mountains, where did the
snow and ice come from ? From the rain and sleet.

The rain from the clouds, then, is the mother of the
streams whether they begin in a pasture field or in the
mountains. They are really born from the clouds.

THE BABY STREAM GROWS

At first our stream is just a baby stream. Out in the
pasture field it dries up when the summer sun is hot.
But it struggles on after the next rain. Let us follow it.
Within a little distance a few small springs join it. There
is more water now. It will not dry up so quickly. Now
it passes another ditch which brings the water from
those other fields over there. It does not take long for
it to become so big that it never dries up, but flows along
the same course all the time.

46 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Why does it always follow in the same course? It
begins in a low-lying spot, a ditch or hollow, where some
water has collected. After heavy rain the water runs a
little faster, and hurries along picking up and carrying
along bits of sand and soil, from the bottom and along
the banks. So the stream cuts its bed deeper and widen
The ditch is now a ravine or little valley. And the val-
ley, in turn, holds the stream within its banks.

Now the valley changes as we go along. The banks
become quite steep. They are not smooth but are cut
by deep gullies. What made the gullies? When it rained
last time the rain came down so fast that it could not
soak into the ground. It poured over the edge of the
bank, right into the stream we are following. A great
deal of sand and soil was carried down from the side.
Gullies are formed and each time it rains they get big-
ger and bigger.

And, by the way, have you noticed something more?
The stream's bed is very much deeper than it was far-
ther back? There is more water. It is carrying along
more sand and soil from the bottom, cutting deeper into
the earth. The stream is full of pep and energy, just like
boys and girls. It hurries along, and keeps cutting away
at its banks and bed. It is a 'young river'.

But, look here ! The stream has cut right through the
soil. Here is some flat rock at the bottom. It is much
harder to cut through rock than through sand and mud,
so the water has spread out wider here. Let us go farth-
er down. Another stream, quite a large one, has come
in over there. Streams like this that come in from the
sides we call 'tributary streams'.

RIVERS AND THEIR VALLEYS 47

RAPIDS AND CANALS

The stream is really quite large now. I think we can
call it a river. See, the water is running swiftly and it
is quite rough. There are big rocks and boulders which
make the water dash up. This is a 'rapid'. The water is
not deep enough to cover all the bottom. These rapids
make a lot of trouble if the river is big enough and
deep enough for boats. The boats would be dashed to
pieces on the rocks and large boulders. So men build
canals, man-made rivers, right beside the true river.
They cut them deep enough and wide enough to carry
the boats. Then they turn some of the river water into
them. Men thought of this long ago. Because in olden
days there were no automobiles, and no trains, they
learned to use the rivers. When the rivers had rapids
men had to think of some way to get past them. And
indeed almost all rivers of any size have rapids some-
where along their course.

In some places rivers turn and twist so much that
canals are built connecting two points on the river, cut-
ting off the twists and turns and shortening the route.
In other places canals are built to avoid going around a
great piece of land like a continent. One of the great
canals of the world, the Suez, connects the Mediterran-
ean Sea and the Red Sea. It was built, not to avoid
rapids but to make a shorter route from Europe to Asia,
to save going all the way around Africa. This is a very
important canal because most of the trade between
Europe and Asia passes through it. The canal is built
in the low places where Pharaoh's horsemen and
chariots were drowned when they tried to capture the
fleeing Israelites.

48 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

One of the most important canals in the western
hemisphere is the Panama Canal, built to make a short
way from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Not many
years ago ships from New York or England had to go
far down to the southern tip of South America to get
to San Francisco or anywhere on the Pacific. Between
Central America and South America there is a very
narrow strip of land, an isthmus. The mountains that
run down through North America and South America
are not very high there. On one side a few streams drain
into the Atlantic, on the other some drain into the
Pacific. And there is a large lake. So men built the Pan-
ama Canal there, using the lake and the rivers on both
sides as much as possible. Now ships go through this
canal instead of going all around South America.

A GORGE !

But let us get back to our river. We have passed the
rapids and the river is flowing more smoothly now. It
has actually cut into the rock. Cut the rock! Yes, it is
true. See ! The channel is narrower now and the water
is flowing swiftly but quietly. Let us follow it down. The
water is so busy cutting down that it does not have time
to cut widely. And see ! It is rolling those stones a little,
near the edge. They are regular cutting tools. Some of
them are probably scraping along the bottom, wearing it
away, cutting it deeper. After a big thunderstorm they
will go on scouring the bottom at a great rate, cutting
it very quickly. And here they certainly have cut it deep.
The river bed is down between two walls of rock. This
is a 'gorge'. The word 'gorge' means 'throat'. The river
is flowing through a narrow channel like a throat

There are many gorges like this in the rivers of the

RIVERS AND THEIR VALLEYS 49

world. One of the best known in North America is the
Niagara Gorge. Maybe some of you have seen it.

A CANYON

But come, let us go on. There is another river com-
ing in on that side, right through another gorge. Our
main river which we have been following is very large
now. It can do a lot of work, cutting deeper and deep-
er. We are now far down between these walls of rock.
Let us climb up to the top. We can see better from the
edge. The sides are pretty rough to climb but if we
try hard enough we can get up.

As we climb we notice that the valley is getting wider.
That means it is wider at the top than at the bottom. Be
careful of those loose pieces of rock. They may start
to roll if you step on them and you will fall. Try this
path. Here is some water trickling down. This must be
a spring. And the rock is all crumbly around the spring.
For even this water is helping to wear the rock sides
away. And a big storm will certainly carry a lot of the
loose rock down into the river. Indeed, that is the rea-
son the valley becomes wider as we climb higher. Much
broken rock is carried down the steep slopes by the
rains. And, of course, a lot just falls down of its own
accord.

The valley wall is not just straight up but rises step
by step. Just like stairs ! Do you notice the softer rocks
are worn away more rapidly than the hard ones ? The
harder layers hold up and form the steps. Here we are
on top ! This is better. Now we can see. The river looks
like a little thread far down below. It twists and turns
in its rock-walled sides. This is no narrow throat now.
This is a great deep valley, a canyon a great canyon.

50 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

There are many canyons in the world. Canyons in
Europe, canyons in China, canyons in Africa, the Peace
River canyon in Canada, the Yellowstone and Columbia
canyons in the United States. But perhaps the greatest
of them all is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, River
in Arizona. The Colorado River cuts down through al-
most every kind of rock: limestone, sandstone, shale, ig-
neous rock a mile deep, down, down into the hard
granites away beneath. It is a very long canyon, 200
miles. And the rocks show so many beautiful colours:
red, yellow, green, grey, purple and pink. Most of these
bright colours are from iron, like the iron rust with
changing shades.

All rivers do not have canyons, only those with swift-
ly flowing streams where their valleys are in hard rock.
They are usually formed in mountains or in high pla-
teaux, where the streams go down many feet to reach
the lowland.

A LAKE !

Have you noticed while we have been walking and
talking, that we have been gradually coming down from
the highland? It is not so far down to the bottom of the
canyon here. And in front of us, not far below, is a
broad plain. The river comes out of its rock-walled
canyon to the plain. And look! It is very crooked now.
It seems to wander all over the plain.

The river is slower now. It has time to spread out.
We cannot see very far because there are so many
trees. But look carefully and you will see a lake away
over there. There is very little rock now. It seems to be
covered with very fine clay or silt, called alluvium.

Let us follow the river to the lake. Look! on the

RIVERS AND THEIR VALLEYS 51

other side of the lake over to the west, another large
river is flowing in. There are some rocky islands in the
lake. We must get around to the other side to find
where the water runs out from the lake. For this lake
is higher than the sea. The water must still flow on.

Here is the river carrying the water out. Miles away
from where it entered ! I suspect men call it by a differ-
ent name here. They generally do. It is flowing on,
steady and deep. Big ships should be able to steam up
and down this river. I wonder if they do?

NOW A WATERFALL

Come on ! The river is flowing faster now. And look,
it is rougher. This is almost a rapid again. The water
runs very swiftly. What is that peculiar noise? It is al-
most a roar ! Nearer and nearer it comes. Louder and
louder! I wonder if there is a waterfall? See! The
smoke! No, it is not smoke. It is mist. Sure enough,
there is a big waterfall ahead. Down the water goes;
smooth and swift over the centre part, fretted along
the sides.

We will have to go down along the bank. We cannot
possibly go down over the fall. Of course, we did see
some little waterfalls farther back. There were some
from the little streams dropping over rock ledges enter-
ing the river at the rapids. And there were others in
several places, but none like this. This looks terribly
high as we look up at it. Why, it must be some hundred
feet or more, all in one great drop !

There are really many great waterfalls in the world.
Perhaps the best-known one in North America is Niaga-
ra Falls. The water plunges over a cliff in the Niagara
River, and drops 160 feet straight down. There are

52 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

many falls with a greater drop than this. But very few
of them carry so much water. Look at your map. See
how the water from Lake Erie flows into the Niagara
River and then all of it just drops down that cliff, swirls
around the Whirlpool Rapids with terrific force, and
flows swift and deep down to Lake Ontario.

Then there is Yosemite Falls in California. It drops
from a great height, about a third of a mile. But there
is not so much water and it spreads out in a falling mist.
And then, about the greatest fall in the world is the
Victoria Falls on the Zambesi River in Africa. But not
many people have seen them. At least, very few white
people. But it may be some day they will be as well-
known as Niagara Falls.

THE VALLEY GROWS WIDE

But now our river has travelled down to a broad,
level plain. It spreads and winds. It flows slowly be-
cause its course is not so directly downhill. The sides of
its valley are far back now. But they are there. And
the river is carrying down the mud and sand from these
low far hills which it does not even touch.

"How in the world can the river do that?" you ask.
"Can it not carry away only what is washed into it?"
Well, here the valley is so level the river is not cutting
deeply. It gradually takes a bit of its bank here, and
another bit there. And the streams that drain into it
do the same. It is making its bed wider. And as a bit
of soil is carried away its place is filled by another bit
slipping from the bank above. Farther back still more
soil moves on. Sometimes it is carried by rain, some-
times it just drops over a tiny slope when the soil be-
neath has been removed. And so the valley grows back

RIVERS AND THEIR VALLEYS S3

and back to the distant hills. The soil fairly creeps down
to the stream, slowly, very slowly.

FLOOD PLAINS NEAR THE END OF THE JOURNEY

But we were down in the level valley of our river,
were we not? There will be cities there and farms.
When the river has passed all its gorges, canyons, and
waterfalls, if it has them, and reaches the low level part
of its valley, it flows more slowly. And then something
new is likely to happen. When the rain comes pouring
down during the rainy season the slow river cannot
carry away all the sand and mud that is carried into it.
It flows over its banks and spreads all the material over
its valley floor. This is its flood plain. It is built up by
the sand and mud which the river puts there. There
are usually people living on the flood plain. They like
to live there. The rich alluvial or river soil grows fine
crops. It is easier to build houses on the flat land. That
is why there are fine farms and great cities on the flood
plains of great rivers.

But when the floods come it is very bad. Sometimes
whole towns are flooded and people have to flee from
their homes. Houses are carried away by the swirling
waters, crops are ruined, and people are drowned. The
flood plain of a river is a pretty dangerous place when
there is a flood. If any of you live on the flood plain of
the lower part of the Mississippi River you know all
about it. Or if you live on the plain of rivers that run
into it, like the Ohio and Missouri rivers, you will know
about floods too.

PORT NEAR THE SEA

And now we are almost at the sea. There is a great
city here. It is not right at the mouth of the river, but

54 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

a few miles upstream. Why? Because the wide mouth
of the river makes a harbour. Here ships from all over
the world might come, bearing merchandise of the east
and the west. There must be plenty of room for the
ships. If the city were at the very mouth the ships would
have to stay along the shore. It is better up the broad
bay which often forms at the mouth of a great river.
The storm waves will not keep swinging the ships
against the piers as they load and unload. New Orleans,
near the mouth of the Mississippi is such a city; so is
New York on the Hudson, London on the Thames in
England, and Buenos Aires on La Plata in South Am-
erica. London is the biggest port of them all.

LAST, THE DELTA

But we have not quite finished with our river yet,
even though it has at last flowed into the sea. When the
slow-flowing water reaches the sea it stops. In the still
water beyond the mouth of the river all the sand and
mud it has carried from its banks settle to the bottom.
Year after year they fall. After a long time they will
build up islands at its mouth. Such islands are called
the 'delta' of the river. Altogether they have a shape
something like the Greek letter called 'delta'. It is the
same as our letter *d' but it has a different shape.

All rivers do not have deltas, just as all rivers do not
have canyons. It depends upon how fast they flow, what
kind of country they have passed through, and what
the shore-line is like when they meet the sea. The St.
Lawrence does not have a delta. It is deep and strong,
and has not flowed through low plains. It is still deep
far out into the ocean, and so the sand and mud are
carried far out. But the Mississippi has a large delta.

RIVERS AND THEIR VALLEYS 55

It is so large that there is a big lake on it. The Macken-
zie River has a large delta where it flows into the Arc-
tic Ocean. The Nile River in Egypt has a very famous
delta. It is the fertile Land of Goshen, and upon it the
very old city of Alexandria is built.

And so we have come to an end of our river.

WHAT IS A RIVER'S VALLEY

And now we must pause and look back. All along
you remember, springs, brooks, streams, and other little
rivers kept bringing their water into our river from
different directions. They drained the land of its water
and brought it to the river. We passed down the stream
for miles and miles. That vast piece of country that
drains into our river is its valley or its basin. Sometimes
we say the Mississippi valley and we mean all the great
expanse of the Central States. We say the St. Lawrence
River valley, and we mean all the country in the United
States and Canada that drains into it. Sometimes we*
include in that all the country, away inland, that drains
into the Great Lakes as well. For the water that runs
into the Great Lakes passes to the Atlantic through the
St. Lawrence.

And then there is the Amazon River in South Amer-
ica. Away up in Peru, only a few hundred miles from
the Pacific Ocean, I watched water flowing between the
mountains, and knew it flowed eastward for thousands
of miles, down to the Amazon, and on to the Atlantic
Ocean. It was a part of the Amazon valley. And there
is the Nile River the valley of which reached far back
***to Africa ; the Mackenzie which flows for hundreds of
/niles north to the Arctic. There are many other large
rivers. Just look at your map to see some of them.

CHAPTER VII

CAVES AND CAVERNS

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree;
\Vhere Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.

Kubla Khan SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

A JOURNEY THROUGH A CAVE

A CAVE ! A magic word ! The word 'cave' comes from
the Latin word 'cavus' meaning a 'hollow place'. And
you will understand the reason, because we are going
underground into a cave to find out about it.

We must take a lantern, a shovel, and a fish net.
This is not a really modern up-to-date cave, with a
paid guide. So we must go prepared like real explorers.
And do not forget to bring a big ball of string. What
for? You will see. We will go into the cave from an
opening in the mountain-side. The string can be fasten-
ed to that rock at the opening. Firmly, for much de-
pends on it. We unwind it as we go. Now, light the lan-
tern. There are no electric lights here. Already it is
becoming dark. When we look back we see that the
opening through which we came is getting smaller and
smaller. It has become a mere speck of light. Now it
has vanished completely.

It is quite cool and dry here, not far in. And see,
there are a few bones. Animals of some kind must have
been here at one time. We have heard before that some

56

CAVES AND CAVERNS 57

animals, like bears and wolves, take shelter in caves for
a short time. In ancient times some primitive men lived
in caves before they learned to build houses. Here, not
very far from the opening where it is dry, it would be
very comfortable, never too hot, nor too cold. It would
be a good place to hide from one's enemies. In many
caves in Spain and France, and in Africa and other
places, bones and skeletons of ancient man have been
found. These cavemen made drawings and painted pic-
tures on the stone walls. They can still be seen in many
of the caves. They show the reindeer, elephants, bison,
and other kinds of animals that early man knew.

Our cave is very black now. The lantern makes just a
small round glow of light. The darkness beyond is thick
and sounds hollow. We are going downhill here. The
space is narrower. Here is a turn. The string must be
unwound at every step, but carefully, for a sharp cor-
ner might rub through and cut it. Then we would be in
a fix. You know now why we need the string to guide
back to the opening.

We are not the first to use a string for that purpose.
A string had been used as a guide so far back in time
that the method is part of a Greek legend. In the cen-
tre of a great Labyrinth of intricately winding passages
King Minos of Crete kept a monster, the Minotaur,
with the body of a man and the head of a bull. To the
Minotaur the king was sacrificing seven maids and
seven youths of Athens. Theseus volunteered to be one.
Now Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, loved Theseus.
She was sure he would kill the Minotaur and gave him a
ball of thread to find his way out again. Theseus killed

58 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

the monster, found his way out by means of the thread
and took Ariadne for his bride.

But to come back to our cave ! Here is a very narrow
place. It is almost filled with soft clay. This is where we
need the shovel. It is hard to dig out this passage. It is
so narrow ! Beyond it the way goes down, down into the
blackness. On and on through long passages that twist
and turn in and out, and round about. Here is another
very narrow place. Can you squeeze through? What
was that sound? Did you hear it? Like little scuttling
feet! Many small animals probably live in here. We
are invading their homes. Rats and mice, spiders, in-
sects of many kinds, and snails and many other crea-
tures would find this a fine place to live. And do not for-
get the bats, the upside-down bats, which hang head
downwards in the dark caves in the daytime. At night
they fly outside for food. Bats like darkness. They can-
not see well in the light. Animals that live in caves
become especially fitted to live in the dark. Some may
live near the openings where they can get out for food.
But others live away back in the cave all the time.

Listen to the sound of our voices ! They seem differ-
ent. They have a hollow sound. Voices have that lost,
hollow sound in large empty rooms. This must be a
large room. Yes, the lantern shows the rock roof far
above us. Some caves are very high, much higher than
this one.

In the famous Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico one
room is 250 feet high. That is much higher than Niaga-
ra Falls.

What a weird sound is made by the echoes! It is
black as night where we are now. There is a great

CAVES AND CAVERNS 59

dome, almost a hill, in front of us. Let us go around it.
Everywhere the floor is very uneven, all sorts of lumps
and bumps, and pillars big and little. Careful ! We may
stumble over them in the dusky light, if we are not cau-
tious. The path is slippery in places, too, because of the
water that has dripped, seeping through the sides. List-
en! the steady drip, drip, drip! Down, down we go
through lofty rooms and still more winding passages,
down into the heart of the Earth, it seems.

Around this bend there is a curtain-like mass of rock,
with fringed edges hanging in front of us. Stoop or you
will strike your head on it. The lifted lantern shows a
fairyland! Gleaming white rope-like curtains of traver-
tine' hanging from the walls ! Farther over, on that
side, there is a great curtain hanging from the ceiling.
It hangs fold on fold, white and gleaming, with water
slowly dripping from the fringed edges down to the
floor. On this side the curtain almost touches a pillar
of travertine rising up from the floor. In one place
they meet and make a solid wall.

Let us break off a tiny pencil-like piece, here at the
edge. It will probably be hollow. And it is. As we turn
the light slowly the colours change with the glistening
lights and moving shadows. The silence seems to press
it upon us. What a relief to hear the dripping water in
the distance ! I wonder if there is a lot more water over
there? We shall see later.

STALACTITES HANG FROM THE ROOF

How does the water get down here? We did
not see it running in at the opening. Well, it soaks or
seeps down through cracks and crevices from all the
country round about. As it comes, bit w by bit it slowly

60 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

dissolves some of the lime in the rock through which it
passes. The lime is dissolved just the same way that the
salt is dissolved in the glass of water, but much more
slowly.

What happens to the water when it comes down into
the cave? Some of it dries up. It passes out of sight into
the air. And what becomes of the dissolved limestone
in it? Of course, the water cannot carry that into the
air. It is left behind, just as the salt was left in the glass
when the water dried. Men call this cave-made lime-
stone 'travertine'. You remember we saw some of it
farther back. The word comes from a Latin word mean-
ing 'tibertinus' from the land of Tibur, in Italy. There
are great quarries of travertine there.

As the water dries on the roof of the cave it leaves
a small ring of travertine. Another drop slowly dries,
leaving another ring. Then another and another. A little
pencil of travertine is formed. Another drop slowly rolls
down over the pencil. Sometimes this is called drip-
stone'. Each drop that dries leaves its tiny ring, one
upon the other. It goes on and on through the ages un-
til finally a long hollow icicle of travertine hangs down
from the roof. Sometimes a single one will grow longer
and longer, many feet in length. These travertine icicles,
hanging from the roof or ceiling, are called Stalactites'.
The word is from the Greek word 'stalasso' meaning
'to drip'.

The stalactites may grow and grow, longer and fat-
ter, until they touch one another and form a broad cur-
tain, with small pencil-like icicles hanging from the bot-
tom like a fringe. Where the travertine-filled water

CAVES AND CAVERNS 61

drips slowly down the walls the icicles grow together in
great curtain masses like tapestries.

STALAGMITES RISE FROM THE FLOOR

Of course, not all the water dries up as it trickles
through the roof and down the stalactites. Some of it
drops to the floor. There, too, some of it dries. First a
tiny ring is formed. Then more and more rings. It
builds up slowly into pillars. Sometimes they are just
bumps, but sometimes they grow into high mounds.
They are all called Stalagmites', whether big or little.
That is another word from the Greek word 'stalasso',
to drip. Sometimes stalagmites grow to be many feet
high. .You remember that great dome we saw in the
room a little while ago. That is a stalagmite. In the
Carlsbad Caverns there are many large stalagmites.
One is called the Giant Dome. Another is known as the
Rock of Ages. These big stalagmites took many thous-
ands of years to grow.

As we go farther along in our cave the travertine has
collected like frozen waterfalls in some places. The wa-
ter has been flowing over the rock here. Before we
leave this fairyland let us move the lantern around slow-
ly on all sides. Take a last look at this strange and won-
derful place.

POOLS OF WATER IN THE CAVE

But let us go on. There must be still more sights to
see. We must go carefully and not slip or step in a sha-
dow. There might be a crevice or even an opening to
another room below. If they are out of range of our
lantern light we cannot see them. The string must still
be used so that we can find our way back.

Still farther down into the blackness we go. The drip-

62 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

ping water sounds now as though it were not dripping
onto the floor, but into some more water. The tinkle of
it echoes and re-echoes. What is this reflection? Why,
sure enough ! A pool of water ! How green the water is.
This must be at the bottom of the cave, for pools, and
even small lakes form in the lowest parts of caves in
some places. In some caves there are even rivers at the
bottom. In the great Mammoth Cave in Kentucky,
there are two rivers. One is called the Styx, because it
is deep and black, like the river over which Charon fer-
ried the souls of the dead to Hades. The other is Echo
River. We need not tell you how it got its name. For
you know the sound of our voices has been echoing back
and forth as we have been walking along.

BLIND FISH LIVE IN THE CAVE

Did something move in the water? Over there? Why,
yes ! A little fish, white and tiny. Our fish net now. Why,
the fish is blind! This is not really surprising. We re-
member that animals that are born and always live in
the dark are likely to be blind like this after many gen-
erations. They never have a chance to use their eyes, so
they lose the power to see.

There are many blind fish in Mammoth Cave. They
are small, only three or four inches long, and very pale.
And very pale-coloured crayfish also live there. Ani-
mals and plants living without the sunlight usually have
very little colour. Have you seen a plant that has sprout-
ed in the dark? The potatoes in the cellar, for instance?
The sprouts are very pale, almost white.

Well, it is time for us to turn back. We can wind the
string as we go, and on the way we can talk about caves.

CAVES AND CAVERNS 63

HOW CAVES ARE MADE

What makes a cave ? It did not just happen. There
is always a reason. As I said before, when the rain falls
a lot of water runs away in the streams. But much of it
sinks into the ground. Some of this water may come out
again as springs if there are any openings. Some of it
is swallowed by the plants. Of course, they could not
live and grow without the water in the ground. The
loose soil holds a great deal of water. But some of it
sinks below the soil. And there is water even in the
hard rock beneath. For if there are cracks in the rocks,
or tiny spaces between the rock grains, the water will
sink down.

The water in the ground will actually dissolve some
of the rock. You already know that. There are many
reasons to show this is true. It works very, very slowly.
It probably takes thousands of years to dissolve just a
little bit of rock. Of course, not all kinds of rock will
dissolve in water. But limestone does. You know that
now. And most caves are found in limestone. Bit by bit
the firm rock is removed as the water seeps down. Soon
small openings are formed along the cracks, and these
grow wider. In some places, where the rock is dissolved
easily, larger cavities are made. After a long time, prob-
ably thousands and thousands of years, many large
caves will be eaten out, connected by narrow passages.

In some caves the rooms, or galleries as they are
sometimes called, are made larger by the rock falling
in from the top and sides. If the whole roof falls in a
hollow may be formed at the surface of the ground. In-
deed, many caves have been found because of such a
hollow.

64 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Many people think that underground rivers carve
out the caves. But this does not happen very often.
Most caves are made as I have said, by the water slow-
ly dissolving the limestone. A few caves have been made
partly by rivers, and some have rivers in them now. You
remember the two in Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.

There are many more interesting things to be learned
about caves, and the life in them. But we do not have
the time to talk about them now. Here we are out
again on the mountain-side.

CAVES OF THE WORLD

There are many caves in the world. In North Amer-
ica the Carlsbad Caverns are one of the largest and
strangest groups of caves. They are away out in the
wild lands of New Mexico. Probably the Indians knew
about them long ago, but not the white man, until one
day, many years ago, a young cowboy by the name of
Jim White riding over the desert saw a dark smoke-like
column coming out of the side of a mountain. Imagine
his great surprise when he found it was a cloud of bats,
flying out of the cave, now in small groups, now in
great clouds like belching smoke. He took a Mexican
boy with him, and went in to explore. As they went in
farther and farther, the opening of the cave became a
speck of light, then disappeared entirely. They were
in complete darkness except for the light from their
lantern. They unravelled string as they went. On and
on they crept. Fairyland after fairyland appeared. It
took many hours to go through. Then they found their
way back *again, by winding up the string. Now the
Government of the United States has made the Carls-

CAVES AND CAVERNS 65

bad Caverns a part of a National Park and everyone
who visits this part of New Mexico always goes to see
the wonders of this place.

It may be some of you live near caves and have even
been in one. Those of you who live in Kentucky know
the great Mammoth Cave of which I spoke. It is really
not just one cave, but several hundred miles of caves
connected by narrow openings. There are small lakes,
rivers, and even waterfalls in some of the caves. If you
live in Virginia of course you know about the wonderful
Luray and Endless caverns in the Shenandoah Valley.
And I dare say some of you have been lucky enough to
visit them.

There are some caves in Mexico. There are not
many in the northern United States or Canada. That
is because long ago great fields of ice, or glaciers, came
down from the north. They scoured off the mountain-
tops and covered the ground with hills of broken rock
and sand, and ground-up masses of all sorts of material.
And so the rocks of the Earth's crust were deeply bur-
ied and protected from being worn away any more. And
except in a few cases, men have not been able to discov-
er whether caves were made in the rocks before they
were covered up with the ice-made soil.

There are the Cheddar caves in England, many
caves in France, and caves in Asia. Indeed, in most
countries there are caves.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SEA

The sea never changes and its works,
for all the talk of men, are wrapped in mystery.

Typhoon JOSEPH CONRAD

LAND AND SEA! The continents and the oceans! Our
surprising Earth has these two great things. And they
are wrapped around with air. The continents divide the
oceans. But all the oceans are joined with one another
at some place.

The oceans are much broader than the lands. Indeed,
they cover three or four times as much of the Earth's
surface as the lands. It has been said that if the lands
were cut down to the level of the oceans and all the
material dumped in, the water would spread out and
cover all to a depth of two miles.

66

THE SEA 67

The very deepest places of the ocean are called
'deeps'. The greatest 'deep' yet found is in the Pacific
Ocean near the Phillipine Islands. It is about 6 l / 2 miles
deep. The highest mountain on land is Mount Everest
in the Himalaya Mountains in India. It is about S l / 2
miles high.

How do men find out how deep the ocean is? They
cannot go down. At first sailors let out a plumb line.
Later it was a steel wire, really a piano wire with a
sinker on the end. They dropped it from the deck of the
ship. When the sinker struck bottom the line grew
slack. Then they read the number of feet on the wire
to see how far the sinker went down. Now ocean deeps
are measured by sound waves, something like radio
waves. The waves travel from an instrument on the
ship to the ocean floor and back. The instrument tells
how far they have travelled. The number is divided by
two, one for going and one for coming back. And that
tells how deep the ocean is.

FOOTPRINTS OF THE SEA

Now here is a question, a big question Which came
first, the land or the sea? It is hard to tell because it
all happened so long ago, long before there were people
here to see.

Have you read Robinson Crusoe ? When he was
alone on the desert island he saw a footprint in the
sand, and said to himself, "There is somebody else
here." For there could not be a footprint if there was
not somebody there to make it. It was not a dog's foot-
print, nor a bird's footprint. It was a man's footprint.
Now the sea leaves footprints or something like them.
We can find its footprints on the land. Limestone and

68 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

sandstone and shale, and the sea-shells in the rocks, and
even ripple-marks are footprints of the sea, all of which
we find on the continents.

What is limestone? The crust on the bottom of your
tea-kettle is limestone. How did it get into your kettle?
It was in the water. That is what makes the water
'hard'. It is not easy to wash your hands in hard water
because the soap does not dissolve in it very well. Fresh
rain-water has no lime in it. It is 4 soft'. It even tastes
different from the hard water.

Just so, the limestone comes from the ocean water.
But where did the ocean water get it? Turn back to the
Twins-that-are-Everywhere. You remember about that
boulder on the hillside, in the Laurentian mountains in
Canada? The pebbly, flaky bits broke up into smaller
bits because part of it disappeared just like salt in
water. Some of that which disappeared was lime. The
streams then carried the lime to the sea with the water.
So the ocean gets lime in the water from the rocks. In
time there is so much lime in the water that it cannot
hold any more. Then the lime just drops down as lime-
stone. So the great ocean tea-kettle all over the world
has left the limestones of the Earth. Some people think
that bacteria, minute organisms, make the water drop
the lime. At any rate, that is why limestone is a foot-
print of the ocean.

Of course, the sea-shells help to make limestone too.
In the first place the tiny animals within the shells got
the lime to make their shells from the ocean water.
When they died the shells dropped to the ocean floor
with the limestone.

But here is a very strange thing. Some of the very

THE SEA 69

oldest rocks that have been found in the world are lime-
stones, the footprints of the sea. So that looks as though
the sea came first. It is a great puzzfe.

How can we tell which rocks are the oldest? Men
who study them can really tell. The lowest rock is usu-
ally the oldest. It was there first. Once I was walking
up a country road. I turned to the right and walked
over a little hill. Down on the other side was a
low ledge of limestone rock. It was in layers, one
upon the other. And right across the layers cut a narrow
band of rock of the kind that once was melted. Now
which was the older, the limestone or the melted rock?
A long time ago there must have been a crack in the
limestone. The melted rock poured into the crack and
cooled to make hard rock. So the limestone must have
been there first. So it is the older. It is just like reading
in a book isn't it? Only the words are different.

Now come back to the oldest rocks we know on our
Earth. They are limestones, sandstones and shales, the
footprints of the sea. They are cut through by rock
that has been melted. So the footprint rocks are the
older.

But there must have been still older rocks to make
the limestone. Men have not seen them yet but they
know they are there. So we really do not know which
is the older, the land or the sea. But at least we have
learned why we do not know. Men will find the answer
some day. That will be something for you to work on
when you are older.

WE WALK BENEATH THE SEA

What is the bottom of the ocean like? We have
wondered about it, and so have many other people. No-

70 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

body has really ever seen the bottom of the ocean, ex-
cept divers near the shores. I wonder if you who live
inland know about divers? They are men that put on a
suit proof against water, and are let down from ships
in the shallow part of the ocean just a few hundreds of
feet or more. The ocean is deeper than that, much deep-
er, and men know a great deal about the bottom of the
sea, even if they have not seen it.

Let us pretend to walk out on the ocean floor in our
seven-league boots. We'll go out from North America
into the Atlantic Ocean and see what there is. The ocean
bottom is not the same all over so we will walk out in
more than one place.

FROM BAFFIN ISLAND TO GREENLAND

Suppose we go away north first to Baffin Island and
try to cross to Greenland. The shores are rather high
and rugged on Baffin Island, not really mountains, but
rocky. The cliffs are pretty high in some places. It is
steep going at first, but as we get out a bit under the
water the sea-bottom is more level. Much sand and
mud have been carried out there. There are a few
scraggy seaweeds in the mud. Not many and they are
very small. The water is really too cold for most plants.
They do not like it any more than we do. Here we are
on the edge of a very steep slope, almost a cliff ! Right
in front is a great drop in the bottom of the ocean. This
is not very far out either. Indeed, there is only a narrow
channel of water between Baffin Island and Greenland.
But we must get across this deep place somehow !

So, I guess the only thing for us to do is to go down.
We almost seem to be dropping, ever so far. It must be
about three miles down. There is a lot of soft mud here,

THE SEA 71

but very few shells. Those we see are very small, as
small as snowflakes, and pointed and starred like them.
Pretty stiff going, isn't it? Just look at this steep slope,
like a high wall of rock in front of us. We have to get
up the wall if we are ever going to get to Greenland. If
we could get down we can surely get up. So, up we go I
And here we are on top.

But we are still some distance from Greenland. On
we go. It isn't so hard walking. Now we seem to be
walking up-slope. The water is much shallower here,
and it is becoming brighter. And here we are on Green-
land. Isn't it cold? See that big iceberg out there?
There is an ice-cap all across Greenland, except around
the shores. I think we shall not stay here very long.

That was interesting ! Let us take another walk, but
farther down the coast this time. Suppose we start from
Nova Scotia.

FROM NOVA SCOTIA TO EUROPE

Look at your map so you know where we are. The
coast is rather low here so we walk out gradually under
the sea. There are level stretches of sand. It is pretty
easy walking, but we have a long way to go. Here are
fish, such numbers of them ! This must be the Banks of
Newfoundland where men come to fish from all over
the Atlantic. But we must push the fish aside and go
on over the Banks. There are seaweeds here, much
larger ones than we saw farther north. The water is
still pretty cold though. And the Banks are a bit un-
even in spots.

What is this mud we are in? It is very sticky. And
here is a steep slope again, almost a cliff! Watch out!
Don't drop over the edge. For the ocean gets very

72 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

deep here, nearly as deep as the mountains are high.
This must be one of the ocean deeps. Down we go.
Carefully ! It isn't really very hard. That is good, for
there is still a long way to go. We may see an Atlantic
cable. The bottom is a little different here. It is a soft,
gooey ooze, made up of millions and millions of the
tiniest of shells. Each shell is a cluster of little balls or
globes. Men call them 'Globigerina' (globe-bearing),
and they call the soft mud 'Globigerina Ooze'. The
white cliffs of Dover are made of this Globigerina ooze
dried out. We call it chalk in school.

It is getting deeper and darker. Now the bottom
seems to be all red clay, hardly anything else. There are
a few little bright quartz-like pieces, like the snowflake
shells. It is very heavy walking, and bits of the red
clay stick to our boots. Miles and miles we go. On and
on ! It is good that we are not in a big hurry.

I do believe we are beginning to come up a little. It
is not quite so pitch black. The bottom has changed
again. It is no longer the red clay but the gooey Glob-
igerina ooze again. We must be nearing the other side,
and Europe.

Ah ! Here is the rocky wall-like slope on the other
side of the Atlantic, guarding Europe. Up we go ! The
rock edges are very jagged. There is green mud here
and it has shiny bits of rock in it. Oh ! this mud must
have come from volcanoes. There may have been great
volcanoes beneath the sea here at one time. Or maybe
the ashes from a great volcanic explosion on land fell
on the ocean and sank to the bottom.

It is lighter now. And there are some corals and sea
plants. The water is much warmer here. The shells are

THE SEA 73

big, and they have such pretty colours. I wonder why?
Of course, it is because the Gulf Stream crosses here
and this coast is warmer than the other side of the At-
lantic from where we started. The ocean bottom seems
to be rising, and it is getting brighter and brighter. The
water above is very rough. We must have come up in
the Bay of Biscay. The water is usually pretty rough
here. There are lots of seaweeds of many kinds, and
shells, and it is not very easy walking.

Well, here we are in France! I hope you speak
French for I am hungry!

FROM NORTH CAROLINA TO AFRICA

Let us try again. This time still farther south from
Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. Before we set out,
look at your map again. We hope you have not put it
away. Do you remember when we were talking about
Plains we spoke of the great coastal plain that stretches
from the Appalachians far out under the sea? Well,
this is it, or at least a part of it.

Now we are walking on and on. Very level ground,
isn't it? The water is shallow too, and there is sand and
mud. The sea-plain stretches evenly far out. The water
is very muddy. Probably there is a storm up above.
There often is in this part of the Atlantic. There seems
to be a quantity of seaweed here. Don't get tangled in
it. This water is a little warmer than it was up north,
but it is still pretty cold. The sea plants get covered
by all this drifting sand and mud. Here is a steep
drop. The floor of the ocean has gone down again.

When we get down it will be just like the walk we
had across the great deep farther north. There will be
volcanic ash and mud, gooey Globigerina ooze and red

74 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

clay, and then the rock wall on the other side of the
ocean. Only this time the wall will be in front of Africa.

FROM YUCATAN

Let us take just one more walk. This time from
Yucatan away at the southern part of the Gulf of Mex-
ico.

We really have not walked out far yet, but here is a
great deep again. It is deeper than the Rocky Moun-
tains are high. Let us go down quickly. It is very dark
here. Why, there is another steep up-slope, so soon!
Let us climb or float up it. For, if we can walk under
the sea remember we can float up. Up and up we go !
Here is the upper edge, like a shelf. It is just like cross-
ing between Baffin Island and Greenland. Exactly, ex-
cept that it was deeper there.

Now we seem to be going up a mountain-side under
the water. I think we had better pick up a piece of
that loose rock to look at when we are up above the
water again.

Yes, the bottom of the ocean is sloping up. It is be-
coming brighter as we get nearer the surface again. But
the walking is very rough. These prong-like things
sticking out along here are fine to hold on to, but they
scratch our hands and feet. I wonder where we are?
There is daylight above us. It is one of the islands of
the West Indies that we have reached. And there to the
north is Cuba, and on the south Jamaica. So this must
be Haiti we are climbing up. That deep place must be
what men call Bartlett Trough. This shallow water is
warm. I suppose because it is so far south.

Do you remember the prongs that scratched us so?
They are coral, and are living along the sides of the

THE SEA 75

island. Let us look at the piece of rock we picked up.
Why, it is volcanic rock ! Then the mountain-side is part
of an old volcano beneath the sea. And this island is
really the top of that old volcano. It is a volcanic island.
There is quite a high mountain over there to the north.
That must be Mount Tina in San Domingo.

If we stay in comfort on this island we will not learn
about the bottom of the ocean. We shall have to come
back by boat some time and visit the island itself. We
have not time now. We must cross the island and go
down on the other side. It is a long way across. Now
we begin to go down. We haven't much shallow water
this time. Here is another deep already ! Down we go !
This is very deep. This must be what is called the
Nares Deep. And how far down it does go ! About
six miles ! Even Mount Everest is not six miles high.
So this is something to see.

Here is the wall-like slope on the other side of the
deep. This was not quite so wide as some of the other
deeps. Up we go. Here we are again on another island.
But we still must go on, if we are to find what else there
is under the sea. Down again ! What, another deep ! It
takes a long time and patience, because there are so
many deep channels throughout the West Indies, and
so many volcanoes with corals living on their sides.

But do not these deep channels and high blocks of
islands remind you of something? Of course they do.
On page 32 I told you about the plateaux in Oregon,
Nevada, and California. How in some places great
blocks of rock fell and pushed up other blocks between
them, forming plateaux and mountains. Just so were
formed these channels and islands. The pushed-up

76 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

blocks have made the islands and they have volcanoes
and corals on them. The blocks that dropped down
made the deeps that we have had to cross.

But while we have been talking we have passed the
volcanic island. The ocean is getting deeper and deeper.
Here again we come to a great steep cliff-like slope
down. The bottom of the sea drops suddenly. We will
go down again to be sure we do not miss anything. It
is just the same kind of Globigerina ooze and red clay
that we saw farther north.

But it is getting darker and darker down here. We
do not want to turn back because this journey is dif-
ferent from any of the others. We have come a long
way across this ocean floor, a long way even for our
seven-league boots. Can you feel now, as you walk, that
we are climbing upward a little, again? Yes, we are.
It is becoming a little less dark. But this cannot be the
opposite coast ! We have not come far enough ! Up and
up we go, climbing a mountain range standing on the
floor of the mid-ocean and completely covered by the
water, even to its highest peak. It lies between Africa
and South America. If we could follow it south we
should find that it sweeps around in broad curves just
as do the coasts of the two continents. We are at the
northern part of it. For it does not continue far into
the North Atlantic. See, or feel rather, w r e have passed
the top of the ridge and are going down the other side
again, in the deep ocean. We still have to climb the
other shore of what continent? What lies directly east
of Yucatan?

THE SEA 77

THE SHELF ALONG OUR CONTINENT
Now let us think a bit about what we have seen under
the ocean. We have walked out from the coast of North
America into the Atlantic ocean in four places. At every
place, some distance out, we found a sudden drop, al-
most a cliff. From Baffin Island to the West Indies the
bottom of the sea slopes steeplv to great depths. How
strange this seems! Why is it? This great undersea cliff
extends right down past South America, though the
drop is not so steep there.

This cliff is really the edfl:e of our continent, which
extends out under the sea. The ocean has spilled over
the edge of the continent This part is like a shelf, and
is called the Continental Shelf. The water is shallow
here. You remember that in our walks the cliff is where
the continent ends and the deep ocean begins.

Each continent has a continental shelf like this. In
some places the shelf is onlv a few miles wide, but in
others it is sixty to eighty miles wide. Indeed, so much
of the northern part of Australia has been drowned by
the sea that there is almost more shelf than continent

HEAVY ROCKS UNDER THE OCEAN DEEPS

Now we know that there are very heavy rocks under
the ocean deeps, much heavier than any on land. Why
do we think so? Well, it is a bit difficult to understand,
but let us try.

Hold a piece of wool in one hand, just one end of it
Have someone strike the other end. You do not feel
it, do you? Hold a wooden stick. You will feel it when
the other end is struck. Now try a steel rod. When it
is struck at the other end, the whole inside of your hand
will tingle with the vibration. The knock does not travel

78 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

along the light, soft wool. It travels a little along the
heavier, firmer wood. But it travels very fast along the
heavy, dense steel, almost like lightning.

So it is with the Earth. Men find that the vibrations
of earthquakes are carried strongly and quickly by the
rocks beneath the oceans.

LIFE BEGAN IN THE SEA

There is another very remarkable thing about the
ocean. Life began there and not on the land. How do
we know? Let me tell you.

But first, what do we mean when we say that a thing
is alive? Are stones alive? "Of course not," you say,
"but trees are." What is the difference? Do stones eat?
Do they grow? Do trees eat, and do they grow? Plant
a stone in your garden. Will it ever grow up and have
seeds that grow into other little stones? "Indeed not."
Plant a tree in the garden. Will it grow, and have seeds,
and produce more trees ? You know the answer.

Stones do not grow. They do not eat. They do not
produce more little stones, except by breaking. But trees
do eat and drink. They grow and produce other little
trees of the same kind. They are alive !

There are two great divisions of life, animal life and
plant life. Right now the very lowest kinds of plant life
live in the sea. Men call these lowly plants algae. And
another interesting thing is that the very lowest kinds
of animals also live in the sea. These are tiny bits of
things that you can hardly see.

Now where do the highest forms of plant life live,
on land or in the water? The flowering plants with
carefully covered seeds are the highest, and they live on
land. And the very highest form of animal life! What

THE SEA 79

is it? Why, Man! You and I ! Man lives on land. He
could not live in the water. He could not breathe. But
even if we leave man out, the very highest forms of
other animals live on land. You know that animals
like bears, wolves, elephants, apes, and many other
kinds.

Life began in the sea. It grew and spread. It changed
and higher forms appeared. Then some plants and ani-
mals came up to the shores and learned to breathe air.
In time some did not go back to the sea. That was the
beginning of land plants and land animals. Much of this
long story of changing habits and changing life is writ-
ten upon the footprints of the sea the limestones, and
sandstones and shales.

And we can read it.

Think of sheets of paper, a long composition which
you have written for school. There are four pages.
Each page as it is written is laid upon the one written
before it, not piled neatly but shoved over a bit because
you accidently drew your sleeve across them. Page
Four, the last you have written, is lying on top, the
only one completely uncovered. It is pushed over, and
part of Page Three shows from beneath it. Part of
Page Two is covered by Page Three but not all of it.
A piece of Page One is showing beneath Page Two.

Now the rocks, too, are piled up like this, one layer
upon another. They are pages of a composition in an-
other way. Each layer of rock is a page upon which is
printed the story. The words are the rocks themselves
and within them the seaweeds and sea-shells now turned
to stone. It is a thrilling story, but you have to pay great
attention to read and understand it.

8U 1HE &ARTH 15ENEATH <JUR EET

What do we find on these stone pages? On the last
page not quite all the shells and plants are like those
that live now, but many of them are. The leaves of the
trees look exactly like those living now.

But look at Page Three which peeps from beneath
Page Four. Only a few of the plants and animals are
like those that live now. The plants and even the ani-
mals were more simple.

Look beneath Page Three at Page Two. At the end
of Page Two there are very few land animals at all.
At the beginning of Page Two not a plant or animal on
land! There were only simple seaweeds and shells at
the time it was written. Some of the sea creatures did
not even have brains enough to move around to get
their food. They could only get what the currents of
water brought to them.

And the very old limestones at the beginning of Page
One, do not tell us anything about life. Perhaps there
was no life. Or, perhaps all signs of life were burned
out when the melted rock burst through the limestone.

But we must be sure to read the story aright.

Mr. Smith finds dark shaly rock with a little oil in
it which' burns. He says "Oh, I have found coal!" But
has he? Let us see. We must examine this rock very
carefully. What sort of footprints are in it? There are
shells in it. Let us look at the four pages of our rock
book. Compare the shells with those in the shale. These
shells in Mr. Smith's dark oily shales are like the shells
at the very beginning of Page Two. But the great ferns
that formed coal lived much later, at the end of Page
Two. So there is no coal in the shale. The plants that
made coal had not yet appeared on the Earth when the

THE SEA 81

oily shale rock was made. The little oil in the shale
probably came from decayed seaweed, early shell ani-
mals or even from primitive fish.

This and many other things we can read from the
pages of the Earth.

THE INTERLUDE

THE EARTH BEGAN

The root is sharp: it cuts the soil
In easy growth and with no toil.
The eye is sharp: it pierces air
And reaches stars, unaided, bare.
One knife there is that's sharper still
For mind cuts Time itself at will.

(Source not known)

THIS IS SOMETHING DIFFERENT!

We have talked about what is happening to our
Earth now. You see for yourself how it is changing.

But how did our Earth begin? No one was there.
But many men have thought about it, down through the
ages.

85

86 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET
THOUGHTS MOUNT ON STEPS

Simple First Steps

How to get food, how to be safe from wild
animals filled the thought of the first men. Later, Man
learned to grow food, to make weapons. Then, when
he could store a little food, could feel somewhat safe,
he began to think of other things.

In time he began to think of the Earth on which he
lived, simple thoughts at first: "We did not make the
Earth so it must have been God/' Again, in time, some
men began to ask one another, "How was the Earth
made?"

Trying to find out how the Earth was made was like
chopping a flight of steps out of the mountain-side.
Each man's thought was a step upward.

Another Step

Once it was thought that the Earth was flat. It looks
flat. Then came a man who said it must be round. He
knew why he thought so. That is another story. We
know now that he was right.

Standing upon this new truth that the Earth is
round another man chopped out a higher step the
Earth moves around the sun, not the sun around the
Earth.

And so, higher and higher steps were carved out
slowly and with great thought. Each upward climb gave
a wider view of the whole question, just as steps on the
mountain-side give a wider view of the whole valley be-
low.

These men have belonged and do belong to many

THE EARTH BEGAN 87

countries. We cannot name them all here. There are
too many.

A Higher Step

Long ago, in the east in Persia, wise men studied
the stars. They found the stars are ruled by laws, not
just whirling around any old way. New stars were born.
The Earth is a star, a star that moves around the sun.
After many years the thought grew that the birth of the
Earth was like the birth of a star.

Yet Another Step

An Englishman, named Newton, watched an apple
fall to the ground. Why did it fall down, not up? Be-
cause the Earth is bigger than the apple and pulls it.
Everything pulls everything else, and the heaviest wins.
The law that makes the apple fall to the ground keeps
the planets moving around their sun. That was New-
ton's step.

Higher Still

A Frenchman, named Laplace, stood upon Newton's
step and chopped out another step. Laplace thought
two stars crashed together and exploded, as they would,
leaving a disc-like mass of whirling gas. As the gas
whirled, bits of it broke from the edges, forming other
centres of whirling gas. In time all cooled, more or less,
and became solid. Thus, he thought the sun and the
planets, the stars that move around it, were formed.
One of them, one of the smallest, was our Earth.

This seemed reasonable at the time Laplace lived.
But in the years that followed other new truths had
been discovered. The planets around our sun are not
moving in the form of a disc, but in a spiral, and they

88 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

do not all whirl in the same direction. One of the moons
around Saturn whirls differently, and there are other
satellites and stars whirling in different directions, or
on different orbits, as the 'star men 1 say.

Onward

Two men in the United States, Moulton and Cham-
berlin, thought about Laplace's explanation. They
stood upon his step and chopped out another. The great
original star made up of our sun and the planets that
now turn about it, probably sent out great bulges of gas
around its rim as our sun does now. Another star, big-
ger still, shot past it and drew after it balls of gas from
one or more of those bulges of sun-matter, drew them
right out away from the sun. But the disturbing star
sped on far away. Its power to pull grew weak, and
the central sun, too, continued to pull back. But by this
time, the central sun also was a long distance away. The
long banner of gas balls of sun-material curved around
the sun, but only the nearer parts fell back into it. The
more distant parts still turn around the sun.

Each ball cooled and became solid, drawing to itself
all the smaller pieces within its power. Thus, thought
Chamberlin and Moulton, the planets were born, and
our Earth was one of them.

As all the smaller stars or meteorites within reach
crashed into our Earth, it became hot in places even to
melting point. So, slowly the heaviest parts sank to-
wards the centre, kneading the Earth's surface like
bread.

The main point to remember about this step is the
belief that after it first became cool and solid the Earth

THE EARTH BEGAN 89

still continued to grow, sweeping up all the meteorites
in its path.

Upward

But more new truths were learned. Some of them are
hard to understand.

When the trembling of the earthquakes was measur-
ed it was found that the centre of the Earth is heavier
than the outside.

Then, the salt in the sea was calculated. If there had
been ocean from the beginning there would be more
salt in the sea than there is.

And then the great truth about radium and radium
activity was discovered. The rays it gives off, though
you cannot see them, make a great heat. Most of the
early work on radium was done by a Polish woman,
Madame Curie. She lived in Paris, and married a
Frenchman. Madame Curie's new truth must be consid-
ered, too. Far down in the centre of our new Earth-star
the radium made great heat.

Again Another Step

Thinking of these things, two Englishmen, Jeans and
Jeffreys, stood upon Madame Curie's step and chopped
out another step. They agreed that a passing star drew
out sun-matter, but they did not think the Earth became
solid soon, but that it was molten for a long time.

One mass of gaseous sun-matter drawn from the sun
was our future Earth. Within this mass were areas in
which the gases were more condensed nuclei, centres
of heavier gas material. In time some of the gas even
cooled to molten matter. All around the whole mass,
like an envelope, was a vapour of lighter gases and

90 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

steam. Picture it, then, hurtling through space, our fu-
ture Earth, a great turmoil of electric storms within it,
of lightning flashing from gas cloud to gas cloud, and
from gas cloud to the largest centre, our Earth-to-be.
The sunlight would be far outside. It could not pene-
trate where the lighter gases and steam circled the
whole whirling, flashing, boiling mass, into which fell
still other starlets.

Gradually fewer and fewer starlets were left. The
seething mass began to cool. Some minerals crystallized
here, some there. The heavy ones worked downward
into the still molten lighter minerals.

Some heavy minerals sinking in would make a basin
here and others there. As the Earth cooled the steam
became rain and fell onto it. In time the basins were
filled with acid water. But within the Earth's centre
there still was great heat from the great weight of the
heavy minerals and from radium activity. For a time
parts of the Earth's crust would burst forth into lavas,
heaving up. Then, in time, that too cooled. The water
was no longer steam, but was gathered into the basins
and dry land appeared. The sun for the first time could
pierce through to the surface of the new Earth.
* * *

Such are some of the thoughts men have had about
the birth of our Earth.

PART II

OUR EARTH IN THE PAST

A STORY IN STONE

INTRODUCTION

High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there
stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles
wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this
rock to sharpen its beak.

When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day
of eternity will have gone by.

The Story of Mankind HENDRIK VAN LOON
(Courtesy Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York)

HOW THE STORY IS WRITTEN

AND NOW THE EARTH tells its own story. Men can
only think how it may have been born. But it is here.
Its story after it was born is written on its own broad
surface, the rocks, the mountains, the rivers and valleys
and the plains.

93

94 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

There are gaps in the story, words missing. Some of
them will be found in due time. You may find one, so
that later people may read more clearly. Parts of the
story are rubbed out. Parts of it are covered. But some
parts of it we can read a story really and truly written
in stone.

THE GREAT RHYTHM

It is the story of a Great Rhythm, great movements
of the Earth. For the solid rock crust of the Earth ac-
tually moves. It has moved many times in the past. It
will move again. The continents rise. Mountains are
born. The continents sink. The sea steals in stretching
across the land long fingers of water which widen and
spread over its surface. The changing rhythm is like
some grand organ music, with crashing thundering
chords when mighty mountains are born. And then
come the softer notes while the waters of the Earth,
the winds and ice change its surface. As it does now,
so it did then.

The Great Rhythm was repeated and repeated and
yet in the repeating it was different each time.

It is true. It is written on the surface of our Earth
land where now there is sea, sea where now there is
land, and even sea where now there are mountains. For
these seas left their footprints in the rocks they made.
We can find them, and use them like words to read the
story the sea has written.

LIFE IS CHANGED

But the crashing chords and the softer notes of the
Great Rhythm were not all. Quietly, silently, Life too
changed. The plants changed. The birds and the beasts

INTRODUCTION 95

changed. All living things, plant and animal grew from
simple to higher things.
Finally Man appeared.

THE FOUR-PAGE COMPOSITION

There are four long, long pages to this composition.
Each has its own story of the rhythm of the Earth,
each story different. The sea did not always cover all
the continents at the same time. Each page tells of new
mountains born. Each page has its own story of the
change in Life.

It is the four pages of the composition, each page as
it was written laid over the one written before it, not
piled neatly one on top of another, but spread out, as
I said before, just as though your elbow had accidental-
ly pushed the pages over. Only the last page is all un-
covered. Parts of the others show beneath one another.
Just so, lie the rocks. The oldest writing is at the bot-
tom, partly covered by the next. In the Earth's story,
also, only the latest rock words all lie uncovered.

THE STORY

CHAPTER I

LONG AGO PAGE ONE

In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth.

Genesis I, 1

PAGE ONE tells of the time long, long ago, when there
was no life on land or sea. Here the Great Rhythm
began. This was the strangest time of all, when the
great Precambrian Shield of North America was born.

RAILWAY TRACKS

Did you ever stand on a double line of railway
tracks? Right where you stand the tracks are far
apart. But look ahead, away off near the horizon the
tracks seem to run together. You know in your mind
they are just as far apart there as they are where you
stand. But they do not look it.

It is just the same in time. Think back into yesterday,

99

100 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

a month ago, or a year ago. The things that happened
then seem close together now. Of course they were not.
When you look back, far back in the Earth's story, the
things that happened seem to run together. They did
not really. There was time between them long, long
stretches of time. It is like the railway tracks. You
have to know in your mind that these things happened,
one a long time after the other.

And so the story was written on Page One so long,
long ago that, like the tracks, its happenings seem to
run together for most of the time. There were two
main parts in it, with an immensely long time in be-
tween. Each part had many happenings.

WE WATCH FROM A MOUNTAIN

Let us stand high up on a mountain top somewhere
in the Adirondacks of New York, or in the Great
Canadian Shield, for these are some of the oldest parts
of the Earth.

Around us here where we stand are high mountains.
Yes, there were high mountains here in the centre of
the continent.

GREAT CHORDS OF RHYTHM

Aged Mountains

Mighty movements of our Earth made these moun-
tains long, long ago. The rocks were shoved, twisted,
turned over, or floated on the white-hot molten rock
which welled up from below and burst out upon the
surface. For look ! There are volcanoes I Great active
volcanoes, as far as we can see, belching out fire and
steam and ashes ! Lava streams boil over the volcano
craters, or ooze from huge cracks in the mountain-

LONG AGO PAGE ONE 101

sides. The bright hot lava flows down swiftly. It
changes to a glowing red, and then grows dark, but
on it rolls, becoming thicker and thicker and it flows
more and more slowly. It fills up the valleys. A wall
of hot, dark lava pushes across the rivers and plunges
hissing into the sea. Thick clouds of steam curl up
from the hot lava.

Lava Pillows

How do we know this happened, here in the middle
of the continent? How do we know there were rivers,
lakes and oceans? Because some of the lava in these
old rocks has cooled in water.

Pour some boiling toffee into water. It forms in
'blebs*. Well, there are 'blebs' or 'pillows' of lava in
these ancient rocks. So we know there must have been
water in which the lava cooled quickly.

Gold in the Rocks

Up in Northern Ontario, there is gold in these rocks,
that were melted once but are hard and firm now.
These gold-bearing rocks lie across Northern Quebec,
Ontario and Manitoba. They have brought vast wealth
to Canada. Canada is the second or third most import-
ant gold-mining country in the world. South Africa al-
ways is first in the amount produced. In some years Can-
ada is the second, in some years the United States.

Radium

Far out on the northwest of the Canadian Shield,
near Great Bear Lake, is some of this ancient rock. It
is a very heavy dense kind of rock, black as tar, pitch-
blende, or uranium. It, too, was once molten rock, and
cut or melted its way from beneath, right through older

102 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

rocks. In this black rock is a very precious thing rad-
ium. Men found it here just a few years ago.

It was a very important discovery to the whole
world, because radium is used in hospitals in helping to
cure some kinds of illness. Before this discovery radium
was scarce indeed, and very expensive. Only wealthy
hospitals could afford it. There was only one place in
the world where enough of it could be mined. That is
away off in the Belgian Congo, in Africa. Look at your
map again! Now that radium has been found near
Great Bear Lake there is more of it and it is cheaper.
Even the smallest hospitals can have it now.

And still more recently from that uranium comes the
power that made possible the atomic bomb, an energy
that has possibilities greater than annihilation making
into nothing an energy that can open a door into the
future, to build civilization, not break it.

SOFTER NOTES
The Rhythm Changed

Again listen ! Rushing water ! A river hurrying head-
long to the sea ! There, where its bed is steep, it runs
swiftly and tears off some of its banks. It rolls the
pieces slowly along its channel, scouring its bed deeper.
Farther on, it is slow and sluggish again. It is under-
mining its banks, dissolving out mineral salts, and mak-
ing caves. The banks will fall in when the caves beneath
become larger.

That will take a long time, you think. Oh, yes! A
very long time. Thousands and thousands of years.

But see, the river farther down has worn a very wide
valley. So the river was working here, long ago, level-
ling the high continent, just as rivers are doing now.

LONG AGO PAGE ONE 103

Oceans Then, Too

And the oceans, wherever they were then, were tear-
ing away their shores, breaking down, grinding up, and
dissolving the rock.

And so the winds and storms, the rivers and oceans
wore off the top layers of rock. It took ages of time.
One thousand feet worn off ! Two thousand feet ! The
top surface became lower and lower. Now many thou-
sands of feet are gone. How many we do not know.
There is no way to measure it.

And there, we have a worn-down plain. Its planed-
off rocks show how twisted and contorted they were,
shoved this way and that long before.

A Desert!

The plain is a desert. We stand now on great wide
desert land. No birds! Wind? Yes, but not in trees.
There are no trees ! No voice ! No call ! No buzzing of
insects ! What can the sounds be ?

Listen! There is a storm, with lightning, rain and
wind! See the clay and sand blowing on and on. The
rain catches some of the sand and packs it down into
the hollows. You can hear the echoes of crashing thun-
der and wind.

Over there are some high rocky hills, standing up
from the desert plain. What odd shapes they have, full
of hollows and sharp-edged rocks! No wonder there
are echoes! Why are there high rocks over there and
none here ? Because those rocks are stronger than their
neighbours. They have withstood the storms longer,
though the wind has blasted them with sand.

Listen to the wind! For miles and miles it sweeps

104 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

over the earth, wearing down the rocks, sorting out
the sand and clay.

The rains dissolve some of the mineral salts in the
rock, washing some of it to the rivers, and to the sea.

Just the same then as now !

A LINE WHERE THERE IS NOTHING

And so the mountains are gone, worn away. Only
their roots are left. Right on top of these mountain
roots lie younger rocks, many thousands of feet of
them. And there, where they join, is only an irregular
line. The mountains that had been built up by the great
chords, the hissing lavas and wild shaking of the Earth,
these mountains were worn down, cut off by rain, wind
and frost. There is nothing there, only the irregular
line where the roots of the mountains are overlain by
later rocks.

ABOVE THE LINE
On the East

And from where did these younger rocks come?

Along the eastern part of North America, where the
Appalachian Mountains now stand was a long trough
of the sea. For the Appalachians were not yet born.
And into that trough the rivers on either side carried
sand and mud from their shores, and deposited lime.
And out of this some of the younger rocks were form-
ed, in the floor of that inlet of the sea.

An Inland Sea

And in the centre of the continent are sea-laid rocks.
There was a sea there, something like Hudson Bay, but
larger. It lay all around Lake Superior and south into
Michigan. This sea, too, laid down rocks on its floor.

LONG AGO PAGE ONE 105

In these rocks is Iron, great beds of iron ore. In Minne-
sota, Wisconsin and Michigan, men mine for iron in
these rocks laid so long ago.

A Strange New Rhythm

Something else is written on this Page One, in On-
tario. It was cold, very cold ! Hard to believe, is it not,
that men can tell what the weather was like so many
millions of years ago ? But you can read it for yourself.
For here are rocks filled with boulders, ice-scratched
boulders. It was so cold there were icebergs in this in-
land sea. Where the boulder-bearing ice came from we
do not know. It may have come from land in the far
north. Or, it may have come from ice-filled valleys near
by. So much of the writing of this page is hidden by
later rocks that it is difficult to tell. But this is the very
first ice that we know about.

GREAT CHORDS AGAIN

And once this happened. A huge mass of molten rock
was slowly moving up toward the surface of the Earth.
Wherever it found a crack it pushed in. It was hot,
terribly hot. It was so hot that it melted some of the
more ancient rock above it. This made more molten
rock. It spread far and wide. When it found a weak
layer it pushed in. It pushed up and up, sometimes
along between two layers of rock, sometimes right
through a whole group of layers. It cut through or cov-
ered all that now lies beneath it. As it slowly melted its
way upward or spread in sheets between the rocks it
'bowed up* the Earth's surface. As it rose higher it
cooled and slowly hardened into crystals.

106 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

This Rock Gives Us Copper

Many metals and precious minerals are often found
in these slowly cooled rocks. And in the rocks on this
page we find a great belt of copper-bearing rocks.
These are the rocks of the Michigan copper mines. We
will talk about them later when we learn about copper.

And Nickel

North of Lake Superior, around Sudbury, Ontario,
are the greatest nickel mines of the world. Men think
that the heavy dark rock in which the nickel is found
was thrust up from below at this time.

And Silver

And still farther east in Northern Ontario, these long
tongues of melted rock pushing between other layers
and eating their way through cracks, widening them by
melting the sides, bore with them the precious silver
of the Cobalt region.

And all these riches of copper, nickel and silver, and
many other precious minerals and metals that men find
now, were thrust up from far below millions of years
ago.

AN OLD SHIELD

Did you ever see a picture of an old shield, the kind
that the knights used in the Crusades ? They used them
to protect themselves. They .were made strong to with-
stand the lances and spears thrown or thrust by the
enemy. The central part, or boss of the shield, was
curved outward to cover the important part of the
knight's body, as he held it in front of him.

In North America these old rocks of Page One form
a 'boss' across the northern part. It covers the continent

LONG AGO PAGE ONE 107

from Labrador across Northern Quebec and Northern
Ontario to Lake Winnipeg, swinging north and west
to Great Bear Lake. On the south it crosses into Michi-
gan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The Adirondacks, too,
belong to it, though they are separate from the main
part. This great area of old rocks is 'bowed up' like an
old shield. Like a shield too, it is very strong. It has
kept the continent steady when mighty forces on either
side were heaving up mountains. Men call this great
stretch of old strong rocks the 'Canadian Shield*. The
rocks in the Canadian Shield belong to both the lower
and upper part of Page One.

Other continents have their shields too. There is one
in South America, in Europe, in Asia, and in Australia.
But none of them is as large as our shield in North
America. And most of them have their surfaces covered
by later rocks, so we cannot read their whole story.

Men think these strong old rocks are beneath the
surface everywhere. If we could only dig down deep
enough we would come to them.

Why do they think so? Because in places where an-
cient mountains have been worn to plains the core
beneath is always these same old rocks. In the Grand
Canyon of the Colorado, and in some other canyons,
the river has cut down through thousands and thou-
sands of feet of younger sea-laid rocks. And there, right
at the bottom, lie these strong old rocks I In some places
men have drilled wells deep down into the Earth. And
behold ! The same old rocks again !

It is on the surface of the Earth in places now, but
it was not always there. All through those millions and
millions of years the winds and waves and rivers were

108 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

wearing off the rock that lay above it, thousands of feet
of rock. For when this rock was molten the surface of
the continent was high above it. But gradually the rock
above was worn away and the melted rock below, hard-
ened now, became the surface.

What a Land!

Here at the end of Page One we see this boss which
covers the northern part of North America was dry
land for millions and millions of years, as it was earlier
on Page One. It was a low land by this time, worn
down. And what a land 1 Still no trees ! Still no ani-
mals I Still, desert, wind and water. Winds rushing over
a vast country. Water flowing swiftly or slowly to the
ocean. A wild, wild land! Thundering storms some-
times 1 Bright sunshine sometimes! Darkness and day-
light ! The sun rising in gold or in a lowering red, pass-
ing across the sky, and setting in glory or in storm. One
day, two days, a year! One year, ten years, a hundred
years, a million years, many million years ! Still, a wild
land!

ON THE WEST
Lane-way of the Sea

And during most of this time on the west of the con-
tinent a deep ocean lane lay from north to south where
the Rocky Mountains now stand.

And see the high land on both sides of it ! Rain, and
storms, and rivers are levelling those highlands, just
as they always do. The sea-lane lies here for many
long years. Boulders are broken from the rocky lands
and ground up to smaller pieces. Some of them are
slowly dissolved. The sand and mud were cairried down
in that time, millions and millions of years ago, just as

LONG AGO PAGE ONE 109

they are now. And they were all carried out and dump-
ed into this great sea-lane, or dissolved in its water.

And the waters of the sea-lane laid beds of limestone
upon the sand and mud from the worn-down highlands.
Great thicknesses of rock were formed in the trough of
the sea-lane, a thousand feet, two thousand, thirty
thousand, sixty thousand feet !

Such an amount of rock!

This rock can be measured so we know it is thick.
It is still there. But it is no longer in a trough. In Mon-
tana, Idaho and British Columbia it is a part of the
mountain ranges. For, along with the rocks of Middle
Time, you will learn later, they were pushed up when
the Rocky Mountains were born. Farther south in Ari-
zona, as I said before, these old rocks are covered by
many feet of later rock. And there the mighty Colorado
River has cut down through them all. Some of them are
laid bare in the walls of the Grand Canyon.

LIFE AT SEA

Any Plants?

Was there seaweed in these sea-lanes on the west
and on the east? There certainly were no plants on the
wild desert land between them. There are some queer
marks on the sea-laid rocks. They do not look like any-
thing much, but still they might be some very simple
seaweed.

Any Animals?

Were there any animals? There are other queer
marks on some of these rocks which might be sponges.
Sponges are very simple animals indeed. Other forms
may have lived. It may be that they did not have shells.

110 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

They may have been soft like jelly-fish, and may have
quite disappeared when they died.

Then there is a Jot of carbon in some of the very
oldest rocks. All animals, you know, breathe out a car-
bon gas, and plants use it and give it up when they
die. The carbon in the rocks may have been left by
great numbers of simple plants and animals which lived
and died in this inland sea. The truth is, we do not know
for certain whether or not there was any life at that
long-ago time.

CHAPTER II

OLDEN TIME PAGE TWO

There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
Oh, Earth, what changes hast thou seen !
There where the long street roars hath been
The stillness of the central sea.

LORD TENNYSON

SOME OF THE ROCKS of Page Two are covered by
Page Three but the uncovered ones tell much of the
story of Life in the sea, and the beginning of Life on
land. The rocks are very rough and uneven. The words
are cut large and deep. At its close there were many
crashing chords, with mountains rising. This is when the
Appalachians were born. Great things have happened
to make this writing.

AGAIN THE GREAT RHYTHM

Again we have the story of the continents rising and
sinking.

Listen, the sound of rushing water!

Ill

112 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

It is the ocean pouring over the sinking land. And on
the floor of this inland sea the continent is being cover-
ed slowly with new layers of rock.

But again there is a change. The land is rising now.
The Earth is heaving. Mountains are piling up. The
Earth's crust is tearing open. No wonder the words of
Page Two are cut large and deep.

Listen! Again! The sound of rushing water! The
inland seas are flowing back to the ocean bed.

Five times our North America sank and the ocean
came in. Each time the water covered large parts of
the continent, and great thicknesses of sea-laid rock
were built up, one layer upon another. The water cov-
ered only a small part of the land at first, and then the
continent sank, the blue sea crept farther and farther
in. Each time the continent rose again from its sea-
bath. Five times! Up and down and up the continent
slowly went. And then, a sixth time it was depressed,
but only a little, so that the shores were flooded.

WHERE WAS THE LAND?
WHERE WAS THE SEA?

At first the great central part of the continent was
land, with the winds, waves, rivers and storms wearing
off its surface. Still no animals and no plants on the
land! Still a wild, lifeless, desert land!

But in the low-lying parts along the eastern coast, in
the great trough where now stand the Appalachians,
and in the west where now the Rocky Mountains stand,
lay quiet shallow seas. At the bottom grew thick strong
weeds. They have left large twisted masses in the mud-
dy rocks which were then the sea-floor. These large
masses were made up of the simplest of weeds, just

OLDEN TIME PAGE Two 113

stems growing on muddy bottoms and waving in the
water. And among the weeds were a few lowly forms
of animal life.

But it is written on this page that the later invading
seas flooded over vast areas of the interior of the con-
tinent, especially during the second and fourth invas-
ions. The fifth time the sea was not so broad. After
this fifth invasion, so say the stone words, the great
continents of the world were mostly dry land as they
are to-day. Nearly all the sea had left North America.
Then, as now, the rivers, winds and frosts were wearing
down the high places and filling in the low places.
They were changing the whole surface of the con-
tinent. The sixth time a little of the sea flooded over the
western United States and western Canada. It was real-
ly very little compared to what there was during most
of the time of Page Two.

What the Seaweeds Grew To Be

The simple seaweeds grew more definite clumps of
weeds about 12 inches high, growing from a centre,
spreading out, moving gently with the water. Side by
side they stood, over miles and miles of the flat sea-
floor. Many of them were destroyed in stormy weather.
But some were left. They were slowly covered with the
mud or the deposited limestone and there we find them,
in the rock, to-day.

And then, in time, some spores fell near shore and
learned to grow partly in the water and partly on land.

By the time of the fourth invasion of the sea, as it
is written on this Page, large fern-like plants began to
appear on parts of the land that were uncovered. They
grew and spread, wherever they had a chance.

114 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Coal is Made

And when all the continents were rising from the
fifth sea-bath written on this Page, there were wide
swamp lands. The ferns and other swamp plants were
tall like trees, and grew jungle-thick. Broken by storms
they floated around and sank. Some grew old and fell
where they had been growing. Others grew on top of
them, just as they do in the tropical jungles now. They
were often covered up by mud brought in by slow-flow-
ing rivers. They lay there for millions of years. What
happened to them, buried so deep? A strange thing.
They slowly changed into the coal that we use to-day.

Yes, indeed, the plants made the coal, without which
we would be pretty cold to-day, in some parts of the
world. This was the time when the great fern forests
of Pennsylvania, Nova Scotia, England and other parts
of Europe were tall, living plants, not coal at all. These
plants did not have any flowers. Our kinds of trees were
not yet born. These were more simple kinds of plants.
But they were big like trees, and there were ferns and
rushes. And flying among the trees were great insects,
dragon-flies. They were far bigger than our dragon-flies
to-day, almost as big as little birds. But, like the sea-
weed, they were much more simple, and they all died
after the time of the big swamps.

ANIMAL LIFE
Brachiopods

And then, in these sea-lanes and along the shores
lived Brachiopods. I expect most of you have never
heard of them. We do not see them now, at least not
many of them. They live in the bottom of the sea some

OLDEN TIME PAGE Two 115

distance out from shore. The living Brachiopods, the
great, great, great, many times great-grandchildren of
the Brachiopods in these early seas, are small, only
about an inch or so long. They are very simple. In the
early part of Page Two they were simple, too, like little
bumps in the mud. Each Brachiopod has two shells,
just as a clam has. But in the clam the two shells are
alike. In the Brachiopod they are unlike. We speak of
the shells as Valves'. They really are a little house for
the animal which lives safely within. These early Brach-
iopods could only move their shells a little from side to
side.

But each time the seas came in over the continent dur-
ing the writing of Page Two they brought Brachiopods
that had grown more important, more varied, and
many more of them.

Of course, all Brachiopods do not have the same
kind of shell. Some Brachiopods are big and some are
small. They have different markings on the outside. On
some shells there are fine lines from the beak at the
top to the edge, all around. On some shells there are
lines ringed around the beak or around the outer edge.
In some shells there are just tiny spines.

The little animal living inside had a breathing appa-
ratus. It grew inside the shell. In the early Brachiopods
the breathing 'gills' were very simple and fastened to
a point. Then by the time of the later invasions of the
sea there were Brachiopods having large breathing
'gills' fastened to rods, and later still the rods became
twisted and the much larger 'gills' were fastened to a
beautifully twisted rod, coiled like a spring.

The early Brachiopods, I said, could only move their

116 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

shells a little from side to side. But in the rocks of mid-
dle Olden Time they had grown so that they could open
their shells wide when they wanted to take in water for
food or air. There are little bubbles of air in the water
that sea animals use.

The Nautilus Family Makes Its Mark

Did you ever see a pearly Nautilus? Probably not,
because there are very few living now. Very few people
have seen them except in museums.

Well, the Nautilus is really very aristocratic because
it comes from a family that lived long ago. The living
Nautilus has a distant cousin, about a forty-second cou-
sin, called the squid, which lives in the sea to-day. They
are both the great, great, great, many times great-
grandchildren of the early Nautilus Family. The squid
is the more common and the more important now. It
changed its shape and its way of living to suit the
changing seas, and its brains grew. So it became wiser.
It dropped its heavy shell. It is able to move swiftly in
the water. It throws out a smoke screen of inky water
to confuse its enemies.

But the poor Nautilus has to be very careful of it-
self. It hides down in the deep seas. It is lovely to look
at, but it is not smart. It did not change. So it still looks
like its many times great-grandmother, the early Nau-
tilus, who lived with her relations in these very seas,
and whose shell can be found in the markings in these
rocks.

Now the early Nautilus was a distant ancestor of the
Proud Ammonites of whom you will hear later. The
Nautilus was a much more simple fellow than the Am-
monite and did not put on such airs. He began with just

OLDEN TIME PAGE Two 117

one little room. When he grew too big for that, out
of the lime in the water he laid a floor over the small
end of his room and built on an addition in front. Into
it he moved. Then he built another and another. But
he built a plain floor separating his rooms. Some of the
Nautilus family, the ambitious ones, built the rooms
curving around one another. But most of them being
humble fellows, just built straight along, one room after
another in a row.

Trilobites Lived and Died

Of course there were many other animals in the sea.
But not a solitary animal living on land yet.

There were trilobites in the sea. Did you ever hear
of a living trilobite? No, you did not, because all the
trilobites that ever lived have died. Nobody has ever
seen a living trilobite. But we find their fossil shells in
the rocks, generally broken. Sometimes there is just a
head or a tail, or a part of the hard outside shell. We
know what they looked like from their shells. Trilobites
were very distant cousins of the shrimps. If you live
by the sea you know shrimps. Maybe you have eaten
shrimp salad.

At first they were simple for trilobites. But do not
forget that the trilobite was not such a low form of
life, not even a simple one. Trilobites must have had
ancestors still earlier. We do not know those ancestors
because we have never found their shells. Perhaps they
never had shells, just soft bodies. The earliest ones we
find have shells and they trusted to their shells to save
them from their enemies.

About the, middle of the time of writing Page Two
trilobites had grown and spread all over the sea-bottom

118 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

along the shores. They seemed to think "What fine fel-
lows we are. Nothing else has such spines!" They lay
in the mud at the bottom and ate other small animals.
There was plenty of food. Later towards the end of
this time they became clumsy, lazy fellows. They had
heavy spines here and there, so they could hardly move
around to get their food.

"We do not need to worry," they thought.

They grew and grew. They became very greedy, and
ate and ate. They grew heavy with eating. Their shells
grew heavy and their stomachs bigger. To make room
for their fat stomachs they had to give up some of the
space for their brains. But they did not care. Had they
not shells to save them, and such proud spines !

But finally there was not much food. The trilobites
were so heavy and stupid they could not get to better
feeding grounds. And so they all died, all the fancy
ones. They died for their pride. The little plain ones
lived on for a long time, right to the end of Page Two.

Other Animals

There were corals, for instance. Not many at first.
At least, we do not find many. But as line upon line
was written upon Page Two, and paragraph upon para-
graph, the corals, too, grew and spread. Towards the
end of Page Two, they even built up great coral reefs.

And there was the Clam Family and all their rela-
tions. Pelecypods we call them all. Clams, you know,
like the Brachiopods, have two shells. But unlike the
Brachiopods, both shells are alike except that one is
right and the other is left. The Clam Family, too, and
all its relations, was simple at first, but its members
grew and spread, wherever there was mud to live in.

OLDEN TIME PAGE Two 119

For the Clam Family and some of its near relatives
like mud those that shove along the bottom in their
slow way. They, too, grew shells of different shapes,
and had different lines for ornamentation.

And then there were the coiled shells, Gastropods,
we call them. They and their living relatives have only
one shell, but it is coiled. The common snail-shell is a
great, great, many times great-grandchild. These early
ones were responsible for it all. They grew and spread.
They grew plain spires, round and round, low spires,
fat spires, thin spires. They put on fancy lines, some
round and round, some up and down, some oblique,
some crossing others, anything that a coiled shell could
think of to make itself different and beautiful.

All this and many more lowly animals first appeared
on Page Two.

A PAUSE

Right here we must stop a moment! To talk of some-
thing else. Do you notice that all the animals of which
we have been speaking lack a backbone ?

Here and now on the Earth there are two great di-
visions of animals, those without a backbone, like the
snail, the clam, the Nautilus, and those with a backbone,
like a cat, a dog, a mouse, a fish, a snake or yourself.

But on the first part of Page Two all animals as well
as plants, lived in the sea, and not a single animal had
yet developed a backbone. The honour of being the
first group to do so belongs to the Fish.

Fish Grew and Grew!

In the lower rocks of Page Two only a few bony
plates are found. But during the fourth time the sea
came up in Olden Time, fish swam all over the conti-

120 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

ncnt We know this is true because we find their bones
in the rocks. So many bones! And so many kinds of
fish! At first they were great clumsy fish with hard
bones on the outside. They did not have scales like fish
do now. We call these old fish 'armoured fish*. They
did not have a coat of steel but they did have a coat of
good hard bone to protect them from their enemies. But
they all died. Their hard outside did not save them
after all. They were heavy fish and could not swim very
fast. They were not as smart as their neighbours. So
they did not have a chance to live very long.

Then later appeared a few fish quite like what we
find in the sea now. Their bones were inside where we
now find the bones of any proper fish. They could swim
swiftly away from their enemies or after their food.

The most daring fish that swam in the seas were the
very peculiar 'lung fish'. They were so smart that they
learned to live in the air as well as in the water. They
had a sort of bladder they used to rise or sink in the
water. They also used it as a lung. Pretty smart for a
fish ! When it got very dry and the water dried up they
just dug into the mud and lived there until the next rain
came.

THE APPALACHIANS ARE BORN AND GROW UP !

Such were some of the creatures that lived in these
seas that spread over the continents and wrote their
story on Page Two.

But then a change came along the Atlantic coast.
There was a great pushing and shoving from the heavy
rocks beneath the great deeps of the Atlantic. North
America began to buckle up on the Eastern Canadian
coast and along the New England States. The birth of

OLDEN TIME PAGE Two 121

the Appalachians 1 But the Appalachians did not grow
to their full size all at once. There were long pauses.
Another great outburst of mountain building broke out
when the fourth sea of Page Two began to flood the
centre of the continent. The rocks piled up, twisted
and turned over. Higher and higher they pushed, far-
ther and farther south they spread. Until near the end
of Page Two the mighty Appalachians reached high up
to the clouds. This must have been a terrific upheaval.
A few volcanoes belched out smoke, and ashes and
flame, but not a great many. Right here on the stone
page are the ashes at the end of Page Two.

It takes mighty forces to heave up even low hills,
and these were lofty mountains, much more lofty than
they are now.

And all this happened long before the Rocky Moun-
tains or the Andes were born.

THE SOFTER NOTES

At first, each time the continent rose from the flood
the land was a desert waste, a whole continent. No ani-
mals! No plants! During all those millions and mil-
lions of years! For it takes millions of years for a con-
tinent to rise and fall.

Then gradually another change came. When the sea
slowly flooded North America the fourth time it did not
cover all the continent, nor even as much as it had cov-
ered before, for there on the eastern part the Appal-
achians now mounted guard. Then it was that plants
began to creep up to the shore. They found the land
good. They thrived. One place they grew was in New
York State. For there, in those rocks of New York, are
ferns, some of them with stems almost as big as trees.

122 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

By the time the fifth sea of Page Two came up the
Mississippi valley, the Appalachians were higher and
the low swampy lands were farther and farther west.
This was the time of the great coal forests of Penn-
sylvania.

ANIMALS TAKE TO THE LAND

And then the animals followed the plants. They now
had something to eat on the land.

The Frog's Cousins

Some of the first of land animals were cousins of the
frogs. Have you ever watched frogs grow? I hope
some of you live in the country near a river, lake, or
pond. If you do you probably know about frogs. They
live very queer lives. You see them hopping around
ponds catching flies to eat, or making long jumps to get
away from you.

But earlier in the summer if you look in shallow
water you will see tadpoles, great numbers of them.
They are strange-looking things, wriggling around in
the water, and getting nowhere very fast. They are
quite large at the front but are smaller toward the tail.
They are only about an inch long or less, and are dark-
coloured. Watch them every day.

One day you will see a little swelling back of the
middle. Next day it is bigger. The whole tadpole is
growing. Later, would you believe it, a frog's leg ap-
pears behind on each side! Yes, the whole tadpole is
growing larger. Now there are two legs in front, and
the head is a frog's head. It is almost a frog, except
that it has a tail. Watch! Now the tail is smaller. It
has disappeared right into the body. There is the frog

OLDEN TIME PAGE Two 123

complete ! It can swim under the water like a fish. But
it can hop on the land and breathe air.

But, from where does the tadpole come ? From eggs,
a whole mass of them. They may be floating around in
quiet water or perhaps are fastened to a bit of water-
weed. From where do the eggs come? A frog, not a
tadpole, lays them. The eggs hatch into tadpoles. The
tadpoles grow into frogs. Then the frogs lay more eggs.

Frogs, then, spend the first part of their lives as tad-
poles in water breathing like fish, and the last part
breathing like land animals. Most animals that live on
the land can live only in the air and not under water.
Frogs and all other creatures that live part of their
life in water and part on land breathing air are called
'Amphibians'. It sounds a big word, but it is two Greek
words joined together 'amphi' meaning 'both', and
'bios' meaning 'life' or 'living'.

And the writing in these rocks at the end of Page
Two shows that the animals which first came to live
on land were these cousins of the frogs. There were
quite a number of them. Some of them were large, much
larger than frogs. Probably as large as a very big dog,
only not so high. Some of their skeletons are found in
Texas, and some in South America. You can see some
of their fossil skeletons in museums. But many of them
we know only from their footprints in the rocks.

Where Now the Land and Where the Sea?

Let us look at the top layer of this Page. Was the
land as it is now, or was there sea over some of the
continents? The stone words on the uppermost rocks of
Page Two show the great continents of the world were
mostly dry land #s they are to-day, pearly all the sea

124 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

had left North America. The rivers and winds were
having a grand time wearing down what mountains
there were and building up the valleys. They were
changing the whole surface of the Earth. There was a
little of the sea flooded over the western United States
and down from the Arctic into western Canada, but
really very little compared to what there was during
most of the time of Page Three.

THE STRANGE RHYTHM
Ice, Again!

South America was dry land. But what a land! A
large part of South America, almost to the Equator,
was covered with ice. How do we know? Because these
very top rocks of Page Two are written all over with
very thick masses of boulder hills. They are just like
the hills in Canada, New York, Scotland, and Russia,
and all places where the last ice stood all unsorted,
higgledy-piggledy piles of great and small boulders mix-
ed up with sand and mud.

There is another way to know about the ice. There
are great gouges in the rocks beneath the boulder hills.
Just as it happened later on Page Four, the ice fields
became thicker and thicker, and so heavy that the ice on
the edges was crushed out and shoved along. The mov-
ing ice broke off rocks, little and big. The rough bould-
ers were frozen in the ice and carried down with it.
They scratched great grooves in the rock-floor over
which they were pushed. Large rocks gouged out large
grooves. Little rocks only made little scratches.

There they are. You can see them in Peru. There are
gouges small and narrow. There are gouges wide and

OLDEN TIME PAGE Two 125

deep. They slope down a hillside. Before the Spaniards
conquered Peru the great Indian Inca race lived there.
Near these gouges the Incas built a large open theatre
for games. There the warriors raced and wrestled to
make themselves strong. They used the gouges for
slides in their games. So they are worn very smooth.
Now little Indian boys slide down them and push down
other little Indian boys. And I hope little Indian girls
get some of the fun too.

Ice near the Equator ! That seems very strange. We
think it is always very hot there. But, of course, even
to-day it is cold high up in the mountains. But there
were not any mountains there at that time. You remem-
ber the Andes mountains were born long after this, at
the end of Middle Time. Why was it so cold then?
Men have tried to answer that question, but no one is
really very sure of the true reason, even yet. That may
be another study for some of you when you grow up.

I hope you are looking at your map. You need it
here.

In Europe there was a great deal of land too. We
do not know much about Asia yet. That is another place
for study. Not much is known about Africa either. But
still it is known that during this time Africa, like South
America, was dry land.

CHAPTER III

MIDDLE TIME PAGE THREE

THE CHANGING RHYTHM

PAGE THREE tells of the growth and spread, and yes,
the death of the great reptiles. It, too, closed with thun-
dering chords. For then were born the Rocky Moun-
tains, the Andes and many other mountain ranges.
* * *

For a long time there was a pause I All the continents
of the world stood high above the oceans, and were
exposed to the wear and tear of wind, rain and ice.

Then, again, in time slowly a change came. For a
long time, again, even after the change began, most of
North America was high, dry and cold. Not only North
America but South America, South Africa and part of
Europe. In Europe the north was desert land but to the
south a broad sea arm stretched from the south of the
present continent to India.

126

MIDDLE TIME PAGE THREE 127

Along the eastern coast of North America the ranges
of the new-born mountains were being worn down. In-
land, salty lagoons were drying up, and in low spots
were trees. For it was no longer all a desert land. Far
inland, though, towards the west, high, dry and cold
was a desert of sand and mud, now to be seen in the
deep cuts of the Tainted Desert* of Arizona, and the
'Great Red Valley' of the Black Hills. Here for long
years the desert reigned supreme. Along the western
coast two bays pressed in from the Pacific Ocean, one
reaching down from the Arctic and the other stealthily
making its way up from California. A ridge of land
stood between them.

And then the mountains on the east began to move
again, not in narrow ridges and folds as before, but
broadly the whole area rose.

On the west, too, the land began to rise again. East
of the rising land the two long bays to the north and
the south gradually sank further. Just as when you
squeeze a rubber ball it swells in places and forms hol-
lows in other places, so the two bays crept together,
forming a trough sinking first at the ends and then
throughout its length.

At this time, too, the sea covered small parts of Eng-
land. On its floor were laid rocks sandstone, shale
and limestone and in them were buried dead sea-
shells. In these rocks in England were the first rock-
words that men learned to read.

Learning to Read the Rocks

A man named William Smith, a surveyor, was drain-
ing swamps and laying out canals in England. He no-
ticed the shells in these rocks, which had been made

128 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

so many millions of years before. William Smith col-
lected the curious stone shells. He studied them. He
soon found that each rock layer had different shells.

"Why," he thought, "I will look for these rock lay-
ers in other places and see if I can tell them by the
shells."

He looked. There were the same types of shells. He
went farther away. There they were again. The same
kinds of rock layers ! The same kinds of shells !

That was a great discovery. For from these first few
fossil-words men learned to read the rocks, first a little
here, then a little there. Soon they could read whole
chapters.

THE GREAT CHORDS

In the west of North America this slow upward
movement burst into action. Another time of great un-
rest, of belching volcanoes! The Sierra Nevadas were
born in fiery rocks and white-hot lavas, in smoke and
steam and ashes 1

Not all the melted rock gets to the surface. When
lavas burst forth they leave space below, and into that
space a great mass of the melted rock slowly wells up
from far below. This is the kind of crystalline rock that
often holds the precious minerals. And there are min-
erals in these rocks made at this time. From them came
the gold that made the wealth of California many years
ago. A great mass of rock like this, that cools before it
reaches the surface, men call a 'batholith'. The word
is made from two Greek words, 'bathos' meaning 'deep 1 ,
and 'lithos' meaning 'rock*.

If the rock did not come to the surface, how do we
know it welled up and that it held gold? Because, as

MIDDLE TIME PAGE THREE 129

before, in the many years that have passed since then,
the surface above it was worn off by the rivers carrying
sand and mud and everything else into the inland sea.
Some of the gold, too, was worn off. It was mixed with
the river gravels.

But why did the Sierra Nevadas form here?

Some men think because the upper rocks were weak.
They were new. They were laid down where the ocean
had invaded the fringes of the continent, in the two
bays that came together from the north and from the
south. When a great push came from the falling of the
heavy floor of the Pacific these weak rocks could not
stand it. There may have been other reasons as yet little
understood. At any rate they crumpled. When they
moved, the hot rock below found cracks and welled up
to freedom.

Softer Notes

With the mountains rose a broader strip of the
continent. If a bird flew in from the Pacific if there
was a bird where the narrow trough of the sea had
been, it would have seen a narrow strip of mountains
bristling with volcanoes, east of that a broad shallow
valley, and still farther east the low continent. As the
broader strip of land rose the shallow valley to the
east bowed down and the sea again came in at the ends.
The shallow valley became a trough, a sea-lane, over
the low continent.

For many years this sea, the great sea of Middle
Time, lay over a vast part of the interior of the conti-
nent, while the land to the east and west was worn
down. For from the west, and in part, from the east
the rivers and storms dumped into the. trough the sand

130 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

and mud they had worn off the land on either side.
They poured into the waters of the sea the lime they
had dissolved from the rocks. A long time after the
sand, and mud, and lime became sandstone, shale and
limestone. These new rocks were not so strong as the
rock on the sides. This is always true. The newer sea-
laid rock is not so strong as the old land. This was not
the first time a sea-lane had come over this part of the
continent, you remember. It had happened before, when
the rocks were laid on Page Two, and so these new
rocks were laid upon older sea-laid rocks.

Maps Look at your map. See the Sierra Nevadas.
Then look at the long line of the Rocky Mountains.
And right where those Rocky Mountains now stand was
that great sea-lane laying new rock upon its floor.

Crashing Chords, Again

But it did not stay so. Again there came a great
push from the Pacific Ocean. Those new rocks were
weak. And there and then began the birth of the Rocky
Mountains. They began to rise first in the south, crush-
ed up by a mighty force pressing in from the Pacific
Ocean. Farther and farther north, and higher and high-
er the huge ripples of the Earth's crust rose, up and
up, particularly on the west of the mountain region. The
whole continent rose somewhat, and the great moun-
tain range capped it all, reaching to the clouds.

And when the Earth's crust heaved up into moun-
tains, then as always, the boiling melted rock from be-
low was hurled out in volcanoes, belching out smoke
and ashes, flame and white-hot lava. The lava poured
from the cup-like craters, and oozed, thick and slow-

MIDDLE TIME PAGE THREE 131

moving from slits in the mountain-sides. Not all at once,
but through many years it happened, sometimes a great
turmoil, sometimes a pause, but ever upward the moun-
tains rose.

And while the Rocky Mountains in North America
heaved up, the Andes were born in South America.
With wild volcanoes and flowing rivers of lava, in
clouds of smoke and steam the Andes were born.

Why did the forces push from the west? Some men
think for one reason, some for another. A few men
think the whole continent was moving westward and so
the western edge crumpled up. Most men, however,
think the Earth has been shrinking, throughout the
years. The rocks on the sea-floor are heavier, so they
sink first. That means when they sink they tear at and
thrust against the edge of the continent. Whatever the
reason, the great push that folded up the Rocky Moun-
tains came from the west.

LIFE ON LAND AND SEA
"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice.

"With a name like yours, you might be any shape almost."
"They gave it me for an un-birthday present."

Alice in Wonderland LEWIS CARROLL

Plants

When plants and animals took to the land how they
spread and changed !

Have you seen the Petrified Forest of Arizona? The
tree trunks, turned to beautiful stone now, were alive at
this time. They did not have the broad green leaves
that we see on so many trees now. They were ever-

132 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

greens with needle-like leaves. They probably stood
high on timbered hills. And somehow or other when
dead they were carried down into the valleys and low-
lands. But there they all are, helter-skelter, in the weak
muddy rocks, that may have been the mud of swampy
lagoons. We find ferns, too, and some rushes, but none
of the trees that shed their leaves in the autumn and
burst out in fresh green in the spring again. When
North America was mostly a high dry land a great
many things died. Then came the great unrest when the
Sierra Nevada Mountains were born. After that for a
long time it was warmer. Slowly the forests spread
again. This time, with the evergreens were new kinds
of trees trees with flat green leaves, and tree-ferns.
There are still tree-ferns in the West Indies. I saw
some on Martinique Island. And there were gingkos
with their two-part leaves. You remember gingkos still
grow in Japan and China, and a few have been brought
to North America.

The forests slowly changed along both shores of the
great sea that began in the Rocky Mountain trough,
and broadened over the centre of the continent. In time
many of our own trees appeared: magnolias, fig-trees,
plane trees, and shrubs like the laurel and holly. There
were still dark evergreens. There were grasses and
mosses. And there were flowering plants, for the first
time. The wild, barren, naked Earth was clothed, the
mountains and hills covered with forest, and decked
with flowers, and even the bare plains were softened
with grasses.

Think of those grasses and grains. They were food
for beast and man. But there was not a man, yet I

MIDDLE TIME PAGE THREE 133

Lowly but Beautiful

But the rocks of Middle Time, lying all across the
continent where once washed the central sea, are full
of the fossil shells and bones of the life of the sea.

There were corals along the coast. At first they were
quite different from those that live now. They, too,
died during that cold spell. Of course, a few of them
still lived in places where it was not so cold. When they
came back later to North America, in the warmer part
of Middle Time, they were very like our present corals.

What are corals? Have you ever been in a glass-bot-
tomed boat over a coral reef? Corals live in warm shal-
low sea-water. When one dies the others grow on top
of it. So they build up an island.

Most of them have long delicate-looking branches.
Delicate-looking ! Yes ! But trust them not in your bare
feet I They are sharp. Look at them closely. They are
covered with little holes, pores. Watch them. Out of
those pores come tiny waving arms. Hundreds of little
waving arms, all over the coral ! They are waving the
water into the pores. For in the water is food. There
are corals in the West Indies, and corals in the Pacific.
There are corals in the Mediterranean and in the In-
dian Ocean, and in practically all warm seas.

There were many other sea creatures, crinoids,
oysters, shrimps. Crabs began in these seas. Such a lot
of things lived in these waters. Too many to write
about ! Many of them still live there. Go down to the
sea to learn what is there now.

Ammonites

You remember the Nautilus Family which made its
mark on Page Two ? Well they had some cousins which

134 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

lived in these seas of Middle Time, the Proud Ammon-
ite Family.

The Ammonites grew and grew. A Proud Ammonite
knew of nothing finer than himself, so instead of grow-
ing straight ahead he coiled around and around him-
self. He had a whole house of rooms. His outside room
was large. He lived there. But break off the outside
room and behold! A smaller room behind it! That is
where he lived when he was smaller. Break the shell,
room by room. There, right in the centre, is a tiny room
where the Baby Ammonite first lived. He began with
this one room. He ate so much that soon he grew too
big for it. The shell would not stretch. So, from the
lime in the water he carefully laid a floor over the
smaller back part of his room and built it larger in
front. Then he moved into it. He kept on growing.
Soon the second room was too small. He built a third
and moved in. He learned that trick from his ancestor
the Nautilus. But, he could not just drop the first back
rooms. They stuck to him. So he built all around them.
He grew bigger and bigger and prouder and prouder.
He built room after room, and over every room he
built a floor.

Now, the Ammonites, proud creatures, built fancy
floors with many flutings. Nothing plain for them!
Their ancestors and cousins, the Nautilus Family, built
plain floors, but the Ammonites would have none of it!
They really started quite humbly with a few ornamen-
tal twists in the edge of the floors where they join the
wall. But each Ammonite Family tried to do better than
his neighbour, and succeeded.

The Ammonites flourished in the beginning of Mid-

MIDDLE TIME PAGE THREE 135

die Time. Then during the desert time the Ammonites
died off. Perhaps they had some enemies that ate them.
Anyway, a great many of them died.

Then it grew warmer again, and the warm weather
trees and ferns spread all over the continents. Well, the
few Ammonites that were left thought "This is our
chance. " They grew and grew and spread all over
again, wherever they could live. Then the Earth rose.
The Rocky Mountains were born, the sea drew back.
The Proud Ammonites died, all of them. There were
none in the Time Just-Be fore-Now. There are none to-
day.

Reptiles and AH Their Relations

What are reptiles? They are crawling things, mostly
cold and clammy to touch lizards, alligators, snakes
and turtles. They are cold-blooded and most of them
lay eggs, rarely paying much attention to their young.

But there was a time, during this Middle Time,
when the Reptiles were the lords of the Earth.

Dinosaurs

Lord of the Reptiles was the dinosaur, and all its
cousins. The dinosaurs at the beginning of Middle Time
were quite humble-minded, that is, compared with their
great-grandchildren who lived close to the end of Mid-
dle Time. Nevertheless, they were so lordly they stood
on their hind legs, quite contrary to the usual custom
of Reptiles. It is true their front legs were rather short,
but they found they could run faster on two legs. Run
they did, all over the land, over the mud flats where
they left their footprints and their bones ! We find those
footprints and those bones to-day.

136 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

If you live in Connecticut, look for them. If you live
in Wyoming or Alberta, look for the bones of their
fierce great-grandchildren.

The first mildly humble dinosaurs began to be crowd-
ed out by their many fiercer children. There was Bron-
tosaurus and his family. He was about 65 feet long.
Not a pigmy he 1 Then there was the Diplodocus fam-
ily, longer than their name, at least 80 feet long. Both
of these huge beasts had tiny brains. There were others
like them. Some of them ate leaves and other green
things. They had teeth for grinding soft food. Some of
them had the great sharp, curving teeth that were fash-
ioned for tearing flesh. They ate living things, perhaps
little mammals if they could catch them 1

As they grew fiercer they became fewer in number.
There was a great tyrant among them, the greatest
flesh-eater that has ever been. He was called Tyran-
nosaurus rex 'king of the tyrant reptiles'.

Dragons

There were dragons once, real dragons. For not con-
tent with being lords of the land, the Reptiles decided
to be lords of the air. Back of the small front legs they
grew a leathery skin. They began to fly. Not a feather
did they have. True dragons they were, ugly and fear-
ful, and such clumsy fliers. When they came to Earth
they walked like other Reptiles.

We do not know what sounds they made, if any, be-
cause sounds are not saved in the rocks.

But they were different from the fabled dragons.
They did not spit fire ! Fire belongs to Man.

After many years the great clumsy dragons grew bet-
ter, that is, more fitted to fly. They grew lighter, with

MIDDLE TIME PAGE THREE 137

smaller bodies and larger wings if you call them
wings. Some, with a body as small as a goose, stretched
20 to 25 feet from wing to wing if you call them
wings. But their day, too, was drawing to a close. They
died, all of them!

Reptiles of the Sea

There were reptiles in the sea. Fish-reptiles they are
called, because their fore-legs changed into fins. They
lived on fish. And I suspect very strongly, they ate a
lot of the Proud Ammonites about which I told you.
Birds

And the birds ? From where did they come ? In some
very fine rocks laid in that inland sea which stretched
across Southern Europe, are a few feathers, on two
small skeletons. They are bird skeletons, the first birds
known. They look more like reptiles than our birds do !
But think what you will ! There are the prints of the
feathers. There are a few teeth on the beaks, for one
head is there. The other head is lost. And there are
claws on the wings, like the front feet of the dinosaurs,
or the dragons.

Are they reptile or bird? Since they had feathers 1
think we may call them birds.

There were a few sea-birds later. They, too, had
teeth. But they had lost their wings, so they could not
fly much. Penguins' wings have become paddles. They
do not fly but they are birds. Gradually all birds lost
their teeth, and became more like the birds we know.

But from where did birds come? It almost looks as
though the birds were related to the dragons, Most
men think they were. The early birds had flat heads, and
teeth on their beaks like reptiles. Their bones were

138 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

much the same too. Both reptiles and birds lay eggs,
and the young are born from them.

But there is one great difference. Birds are warm-
blooded and reptiles are cold-blooded. Because of this
some men think birds did not come from reptiles. It
would be a good thing to find some more skeletons of
early birds. We might be able to be more certain one
way or the other.

The birds lived on, and became large and important
in the Time Just-Before-Now.

Mammals

And then there were Mammals! Mammals are
warm-blooded creatures that feed their young with
milk, and all but the most lowly are born complete,
though not yet grown up. We are very interested in
them because Man is a Mammal.

The grasses, cereals and fruits had come to stay on
the Earth. And upon them the mammals thrived. But
the mammals were just beginning at this time. They
were simple, small, none of them bigger than a small
dog. But their brains were big. Mammals were swift
They had warm blood as we have. If your hands are
cold, breathe on them. Your breath is warm because
you are warm inside. Lie down beside your dog. He
keeps you warm. Put your kitten on your knee. How
warm it is ! But a fish is not warm. It is cold and clam-
my. So is a snake or a lizard. But the Mammal is warm-
blooded.

The first tiny unimportant mammals appeared in
Germany, England and South Africa, but there were
not yet any in North America. They must have felt
strange and afraid. Of course, they were not so differ-

MIDDLE TIME PAGE THREE 139

ent from the reptiles as mammals are now. We really
do not know much about them. A few jaws with teeth
and a skull are all that have been found. But do not
despise them! These simple early mammals were to
win out. In time mammals became the most important
animals on the Earth.

Did men live then?

No, not even the first savage wild men. There was
not one human being. But as time moved on from the
beginning to the close of Middle Time we see how the
Earth was being prepared.

Then They Died

This Middle Time was truly a time of great growth.
The creatures in the sea grew and multiplied. But es-
pecially on land, plants and animals grew and spread.
For there was a time when there was no life on land.
Both plants and animals grew from simple forms to
higher forms. Many of the plants lived on into the Time
Just-Before-Now.

But the animals! When the Rocky Mountains were
born they died! Many of them! Never to come back
again. The Proud Ammonites died! The dinosaurs
died ! The great land turtles died ! I have not spoken of
them, but there were some. The dragons died ! It was
a time of dying!

The Little Things Lived On

But the birds lived on, and the swift cunning little
mammals lived on. They could escape their more clumsy
enemies. They could move quickly from place to place
when the weather changed. They lived to become, in
turn, the lords of creation in the Time Just-Before-Now.

CHAPTER IV

JUST-BEFORE-NOW PAGE FOUR

PAGE FOUR has a strange new rhythm, and is most in-
teresting for another reason during it Man appeared.

* * *

The story on this page is not all written in solid rock.
Much of it is found in the loose rock, such as clay, sand,
and mud which we see lying about everywhere. Some of
the things that happened Just-Before-Now are happen-
ing now, but not all of them.

This time began in quietness. So it is written on Page
Four, the last page of the Composition, the Page that
tells of the first man on Earth!

During this quiet time all the mountains were being
worn down by rivers, frost and wind. Great thicknesses
of sediments from jthe worn-down high places were

140

JUST-BEFORE-NOW PAGE FOUR 141

strewn over the lower lands. These were land sediments,
dry, not cemented as they sometimes are in the ocean.

But along the ocean shore the sediments were carried
into the sea. And the seashore was not where it is now,
but far inland. In California, where the Coast Range
now stands were no mountains at all. No, even the
land was deep under the sea, and many feet of mud
were dropped upon it. That mud, raised up, is now the
shale that holds the oil of California.

In the east, during this quiet time the mountains,
probably higher than the present Appalachians, were
worn down more and more by the winds and rivers.
They were almost beginning to look like plains, before
the great restless Earth warped up again.

AGAIN MOUNTAINS ARE BORN !

And yet once again ! Just before Man came the Great
Chords of the Rhythm were struck !

The whole world seemed to be just bursting out in
volcanoes, belching out smoke, ashes and boiling lava.
Of course, not really the whole world but so much of
it that you can hardly think of the rest.

In North America the mountains on the west were
slowly rising higher and higher. There was a long line
of belching volcanoes: Mount Shasta, Mount Hood,
Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, and many others. Lassen
Peak is still alive. The others are dead volcanoes now,
but their sides are all built up with lava which poured
out of them red-hot or white-hot.

In the States of Washington and Oregon the lava
poured over a great basin and filled it with lava, flow
upon flow, until the Columbia Plateau was built up. The
great ridge of the Sierra Nevadas rose higher and high-

142 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

er, one great mass of crystalline rocks. And in the space
between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas
immense blocks of the Earth's crust dropped. Other
blocks were pushed up. Now we call that area 'the
Great Basin'.

In the east the Appalachians were treated more gent-
ly. They were warped up a little higher. Their streams
began to flow faster and to wear them down again.

But it was not only in the United States and Canada
that volcanoes belched and mountains moved. In South
America the Andes rose higher and higher. In Peru
there was a great lava plateau built up just like the
Columbia Plateau. And remember, the Andes are high-
er than any mountain range in North America.

And in Europe the Alps rose up and up. In Asia the
Himalayas went up, up. And remember, the highest
mountain in the world, Mount Everest, is in the Him-
alayas.

In all these great mountain ranges, and in many
smaller ones were volcanoes belching out fire.

Truly it seemed as if the Earth was on fire, and never
quiet !

Which is greater a time when mountains are born,
with belching volcanoes, and rising continents, or the
quiet times when mountains are being worn down?

It is a hard question. There is great noise and fire
when mountains are born, but great things happen dur-
ing the quiet times, too. The shifting of the sediments
and of the weight of the Earth's crust during the quiet
time may be one reason for the change which folds up
mountains.

JUST-BEFORE-NOW PAGE FOUR 143

But the greatest thing that happens in the quiet times
is the growth and spread of life.

THE STRANGE RHYTHM

Then a strange thing happened. It had happened be-
fore in one small place of which we know on Page One,
and then again over wide areas late in the time when
Page Two was written.

It grew cold, very cold. Do not ask why! I cannot
tell you. Some men think one thing, some another. But
no one is really sure, even yet. But fields, great fields
of ice or glaciers covered the northern continents.

Ice and snow, in some places a mile thick, covered
the northern half of North America. This was the
strange rhythm that weighed our land down. Strange !
The sea has come and gone many times, but only once
before (the story is told on Page Two) did great
sheets of ice cover large parts of the Earth.

Greenland is mostly covered with ice now, and so
is Antarctica. If you sail away to Greenland you can
find only a few harbours along its shore and very little
uncovered land beyond. Except for the narrow ice-free
rim at the shore, this large island is still covered with
a thick sheet of ice. Great ice-caps like this are called
'continental glaciers'. Greenland and Antarctica are the
only lands that have continental glaciers now. The other
glaciers of the world are much smaller. They are really
rivers of ice flowing out from ice-covered mountain-
sides.

But once up in the north, not only Greenland was
covered with ice, but the whole northern part of North
America all of Canada and some of the northern

144 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

States. Covered too, was the north of Europe and
Asia.

How do we know the ice in North America was a
mile thick in some places ? Because there are mountains
a mile high that were covered, and others higher were
covered all but their tips. Their peaks stood like islands
above the broad sea of ice and snow.

And on these island peaks grew plants of colder cli-
mates. Their brothers and cousins on the lower lands
perished in the snow. Of course, plants grow in the
north now. But they came up again from the south
after the ice had gone, though not all our plants came
from the south, for some of these true northerns still
live on mountain-tops.

There is another reason for knowing the peaks were
not covered. The ice was very heavy. It was so heavy
that some of it was squeezed out along the edges. As
it moved over the hills it tore off all jutting, jagged rock
edges, and all sharp pieces. The loosened, broken rocks
became frozen in the ice, and moved on with it. Like
great scrubbing brushes the ice with its rock rubble just
scoured off the tops of all other mountains and left
them rounded. So when we find a high, rough, jagged
peak we know the ice never scrubbed that mountain
peak.

Where the loosened rock pieces were frozen in the
bottom of the ice, they were scraped along the ground.
And did they scratch it! The ice-cap used the boulders
like a huge slate-pencil. They wrote just exactly the
direction in which the glaciers moved. The words are
the scratches and grooves they made in the flat rock
surface over which they slid. We can read them now.

JUST-BEFORE-NOW PAGE FOUR 145

Sometimes scratching along the face of the Earth,
or scrubbing off mountain-tops, the boulders in the ice
were themselves crushed to bits, smaller and smaller, or
even worn to powder.

As the glaciers reached the valleys, or came farther
south the weather became warmer. The ice melted. It
rained, and melted more ice. But, after a long time it
grew colder again. Snow fell instead of rain. The ice-
cap grew thicker again and heavier. Its edges pushed
southward again, covering up all that had happened
during the warmer weather.

What had happened in the warm spell? What be-
came of all the boulders, large and small, the torn off
mountain-tops ground to powdery earth what happen-
ed to them when the ice melted? They just dropped
where they were, higgledy-piggledy, big and little to-
gether, with earth or coarse bits of rock between them.
Then weather, winds and water got busy. Soil was made
from these broken up mountain-tops. Some of the iron
in the rocks rusted. Other changes took place. Once or
twice the ice almost disappeared, then it grew colder
again, and back came the ice for a long time. Several
between-soils are found in Illinois, Wisconsin and other
places. Plants grew. Near Toronto, in one of these
between-soils there are tree branches, not north-country
trees, but warm-weather trees.

But when the ice finally all melted, think of all the
water! Lakes and rivers! We find their beaches and
shores now. In places the water sorted out some of the
mixed-up piles of loose boulders, let free some of the
sand, and carried the finer clays out into the many lakes,
where it gradually sank to the bottom. We find the clay

146 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

now, spread in layers over the country-side. The layers
are called Varves\ from a Swedish word meaning rib-
bon, because when cut, the thin layers are like ribbons.

So, in large areas the ice-cap left the whole country-
side covered with boulder hills, partly sorted in places,
with varved lake-clays in places, with washed-out soils
in places. None of it really belongs where it is. It came
from farther north. But, nevertheless, there it is, in
Canada and the Northern States.

That, all that, is one strange thing that happened in
the Time Just-Before-Now.

And then in North America !

The sea came up over the fringes of the northern
part of the continent. Over the edges of Europe and
Asia too ! Not very much, but still it lay in spots and
hollows where you never see it now. In North America
it came away up the St. Lawrence and down into Lake
Champlain. It left sea-beaches and sea-shells far up the
Ottawa valley.

Why did it come ? Because the continent had been
weighted down by the ice and it took a little while to
rise again. The ocean seized the chance to get another
look far inland.

And so, these are the things that took place on the
Page Four of the Earth's history, Just-Before-Now.

AND THE LIFE ON EARTH !
Plants

Among the plants w r ere some of the trees that shed
their leaves for the winter. They grew and spread. And
flowering plants, such as we know ! It was the beginning
of the Earth as we know it now.

JUST-BEFORE-NOW PAGE FOUR 147

In the Sea

Some forms of all the animals that lived in the sea,
still lived there. There were still tiny one-celled crea-
tures. There were still sponges. There were still corals.
There were still clam-like and snail-like forms, but they
were very different from their great, great, many times
great-grandparents. There were still fish, more of the
kinds that we know now.
Mammals

And so you see, there were a great many animals dur-
ing this Time Just-Before-Now. There were many others
about which I have not spoken. Some of these animals
lived on, and some died out.

This last Page, Just-Before-Now, was the time when
mammals, the wisest and cleverest group of all the
creatures, first appeared in great numbers, and grew
and spread all over the Earth. The time of this Page
is sometimes called the 'Age of Mammals*. There had
been a few primitive ones before, as you know. But now
they grew stronger and wiser and swifter. Finally, the
wisest of all Man appeared. Even he grew, and
learned to live on almost all the lands of the Earth.
But Man has much, very much to learn yet.

Horses

There was the horse, one of Man's greatest friends.
The kind of horse you know now is not like the first
horse. Even the wild horses of to-day are smaller and
tougher than our thoroughbreds. But these horses of
the time of the glaciers and before were very strange.

Look at a horse's hoof. A horse-shoe is fastened to
his one large toe or foot bone. But this early horse was
much smaller and he had three bones, Jike fingers or

148 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

toes, one large one in the middle and two smaller ones,
one at each side. Even before that there was an earlier
horse that had four toes on his front feet and three on
his hind feet. He was a wee little horse, just about as
big as a fox-terrier, small and quick. He lived on leaves
and tender shoots of trees in the forests. He had a lot
of enemies, much bigger and stronger than himself, but
they were not so wise as he. He used his intelligence and
his swiftness to keep away from them. And this little
horse grew and changed.

And finally evolved the horse that we know to-day.

QUEER, B UT A MAN !

And then came Man! Not in America at least,
none of his bones have been found here. This first
group of men possibly lived in southern Europe or Asia.

* * *

It is evening away off in Persia. A dark cave on a
hillside! A man comes to the cave mouth. The setting
sun falls upon him. He looks like no one you have ever
seen before. He is short and thick. He has a wide nose,
heavy eyebrows, a low forehead, almost no neck, short
squat legs and large feet. He needs no clothes. He is
covered with hair. In his hand he holds a bone, from
which with his strong teeth he tears great chunks of
meat and swallows them dow r n. His face is big-featured
and, well brutal, that is, if we compare it with that of
an ordinary man now. But compare it with that of the
beasts around. It is more cunning. There is a dawning
intelligence.

And he is more intelligent than the animals about
him. He makes himself stone tools. He makes fire,

JUST-BEFORE-NOW PAGE FOUR 149

though he sometimes eats his meat raw as you see. But
he has learned that fire keeps him warm. In his caves
are found traces of fires. This man has no bow and ar-
row. He never saw one. He never even imagined one.
And yet he is a hunter of hig game, bison, cave-bear,
horse and reindeer.

We know he was a big-game hunter because we find
his bones with the bones of the big animals. And with
the man's bones we find his simple stone tools. He was
buried with them.

The oldest skeletal remains have a skull which slopes
back like that of living apes. There is not a real chin
and the mouth and jaw project far out.

Skeletons of ancient man have been found in several
countries of Europe, Africa and in Asia: in Mesopo-
tamia and in China.

Why were these early men so different from us of
to-day ? And why so ape-like in appearance ?

Well, all life, no matter how lowly or how high, has
slowly changed through the ages. And in that change,
especially with the animals, bigger and better and
stronger types have developed. They have learned bet-
ter how to defend themselves from their enemies and
how to live. Gradually changes took place in their bod-
ies.

We human beings did not just happen. We are much
more important than that, for we are a part of this
great change. Our story began away back before the
great Glacial Age. Our very distant ancestors in some
ways looked like the gorillas and other apes now liv-
ing, but they were more intelligent. Away back, long
before that, all of us probably came from the same

150 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

early form. Just what that was we do not know yet.
Some day probably other skeletons will be found that
will help solve the mystery.

And is it not a much bigger thought that we are
growing to something better and better, than to be just
made, ready-made, like a piece of magic? We are part
of a great development, a very important part. And
development is law and order and growth.

And so Man too, developed. He learned to use
tools, to tame some of the animals.

Did Boys and Girls Live Then?

There were men. There were women, and of course
boys and girls. Were they like us ? How did they live ?
What did they eat and wear? What did they do? And
where did they live? Of course, they did not live on
the glaciers. They lived farther south where the ice-
cold climate did not reach them.

# # *

Thousands of years have passed.
* * *

There, on the hillside, a skin tent is pitched. It stands
alone. The flap is lifted and a boy comes out. He stands
for a minute, his hand on the rope that pulls the tent
flaps tight. The rope looks queer! It is not a rope ! It is
all made of skin.

The forest is different, too. That tree over there is
strange. It is a lighter green, standing out against the
dark evergreens. Its leaves are divided into two parts.
They flutter in the breeze. It is a gingko tree. There
are gingkos now in Japan. There are a few in the
United States and in Canada. I have seen them, in

JUST-BEFORE-NOW PAGE FOUR 151

Washington and in Ottawa, but they were brought
there. They do not now grow of themselves in the
North American forests.

The boy stoops and picks up a bow. He takes some
arrows from a pile. Each arrowhead is of delicately
chipped stone. Some have a toothed edge. Some of the
shafts have notches and ornaments down the sides. Per-
haps these notches mean his father's name. Perhaps
his father is chief of the tribe.

The boy runs to a woman, and says something. I do
not know the words. They are like no living language.
But the woman understands. She lays down a long
coarse leather sinew she uses for thread, and a bone
awl with which she makes holes in the skin over her
knees. She is making a crude garment for the boy.
Proudly he puts it on, and hurries to the trees at the
edge of the bush.

All along the edge some wild wolf-like dogs are fas-
tened far apart to keep them from tearing one another
to pieces. For they are wild, and they are hungry. Their
masters want them to be hungry because they will hunt
better.

Some women and naked children come along from
the huts near the swamp. They all jabber together,
words of the unknown tongue. The boy hands each dog-
lead to a different woman. The dogs must still be kept
apart. They pull, snarl and snap. But the women are
sturdy and strong, and are able to hold them.

Again the tent flap opens. A man comes out. He is
tall and straight. His chin is strong, and he has a fine
high forehead. He is almost like the men we know. He
picks up a long, heavy spear, and strikes a blow at the

152 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

howling dogs. He turns to the woman who was sewing
and says some words in that unknown tongue.

The men, women and children all jabber together,
and shout at the dogs. They make a fearful noise. They
seem to be angry but I do not suppose they are.

They all need food. The rest of the men have gone
to hunt for it. Perhaps they will rob another tribe if
they do not find food, and if they find another tribe in
this lonely country. And they might even eat their ene-
mies if they cannot get food any other way. Who
knows? They are savage people, but wiser, far wiser,
than the animals about them. And a long time after
their descendants became still wiser. They learned to
live together, to study and learn, and to use the forces
of nature, like the wind, and electricity and many other
things. Even now in our day man has not yet finished
his growth.

But this boy and this man are living long ago. They
go on through the bush, over plains with short grass.
They see a monstrous woolly rhinoceros coming up
from the edge of a river. He is too big and fierce for
them alone. By signs which we would never see, per-
haps by smell, they trace some of the other hunters,
one by one.

See ! The hunters have killed a great bear. There will
be meat for all. They hide it safely and then turn back
to stalk the rhinoceros. It is a fierce fight, the men have
their arrows only. Two of the men are killed and
trampled by the great beast, who like the men is fight-
ing for its life. Two of the dogs are killed too, and an-
other dies from wounds later.

Some of the men go to a cache. (They do not call it

JUST-BEFORE-NOW PAGE FOUR 153

that. I do not know their word. 'Cache' is a French-Ca-
nadian word meaning a hidden store, usually of food).
On the way they kill a great tiger with long upper teeth.
Sabre-toothed tiger, men call him now, because he had
teeth like a sabre.

The hunters see him behind some trees near a clear-
ing. With blood-reddened mouth he tears apart a small
deer-like animal which has not been swift enough to es-
cape him. The tiger is so greedy, or so hungry, that he
does not see the men. He is on the wrong side of the
wind. It is blowing their scent the other way. They see
him soon enough to hold back the dogs. The men creep
nearer. They almost miss him. The first man is so eager
to get him he shoots too soon. Several arrows strike the
tiger and then the wolf-dogs are let loose. It is a ter-
rible fight. But they get him. The tiger's skin is badly
torn, especially about the head. But there is still a good
piece of it left. It will be used for clothes or something
else.

The hunters turn back to the village with their kill,
back to the hungry tribe. There will be food. There will
be warm furry skins. There will be more skin for tents.

Now the boy and his father leave the .other hunters.
They go on. They want to see more. Each leads a dog
by a long thong fastened to his arm. They come out
of the bush to a stretch of wilderness. Tufts of coarse
grass grow around. They hear the quick sharp sound of
many feet. Peering from behind a bush they watch a
herd of wild horses. At a sound or a whiff on the wind
the horses fling back their heads and fly in a dusty panic
across the plain. Their sharp hoofs beat into the hard
ground, horses with quick feet!

154 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Night comes on. The dogs are fastened well apart
from one another. If any danger comes at night, the
dogs will hear or smell it. With their arrows and their
stone knives the man and boy just roll under a bush to
sleep.

In the morning the boy awakes suddenly. He hears
a croaking sound. It is something new. He raises him-
self stealthily on his elbow and peers out from under
the bush. He sees a great vulture-like bird, not far from
him. In a moment several clumsy birds fly along heavily
near the ground. They slowly pass out of sight, some-
times walking, helped along by their large wings, some-
times flying awkwardly above the ground. The boy
wonders "Why can birds stay up in the air?" He jumps
up and tries himself to spring into the air from a little
hillock. It is no use. He falls heavily to the ground. The
movement wakens his father.

What the boy says to the man in that strange lan-
guage you can imagine. There were not many birds
then, when the glaciers were slowly withdrawing to the
north. So this was quite a sight.

Together the man and boy tear up roots for break-
fast. They taste good. It is much easier than hunting.
Then they push on northward. They do not know they
are going north.

But they must be. At noon the sun casts their shad-
ows that way.

Farther and farther north they go. One day they
hear a loud trumpeting. Not even the man has heard
it before. They climb a tree and 'freeze', like all wild
things. For they are wild, though they are men. They
remain absolutely still. Down the slope and over the

JUST-BEFQRE-NOW PAGE FOUR 155

glade cornes a great animal, with long curving tusks and
a huge trunk. He looks like an elephant but is larger.
He is one of the great, great-grandfathers of elephants.
He is covered with fur, like the rhinoceros they had
helped to kill, weeks ago it seems now. They wait
breathlessly. With its long trunk the great creature
pulls up the coarse grass by the roots. It even reaches
high in the trees and rips off the leaves. The man and
boy climb higher. But the hairy mammoth, for that is
what he is, lumbers on, eating as he goes.

One day through the bushes they see a swiftly-moving
animal, smaller than our deer, come over the scrub to
drink at a near-by stream. He drinks, makes a peculiar
grunt and then moves on. The man and the boy speak.
I do not know what they call it because no one knows
their words. But it was a kind of camel, though it had
no hump, or only a very little one. For camels, too, once
lived in North America.

There were many other animals. There were giant
sloths, and giant pigs, and many other creatures with
queer names. Most of them are gone now. But the man
and the boy could not see all there were. North Amer-
ica is so large, and the animals did not all live in one
part of it.

In the late afternoon, weeks afterwards, they come
to a rocky hilly country. Just at dusk they see a great,
grey shadow lumbering around a point of rock and then
disappear into a cave. It is a cave-bear. Now, the man
and boy are hungry. They have eaten berries but the
flat country with the roots is far behind. They have not
been able to kill anything all day. The boy has never
seen a bear like this before, but the man has. It is dan-

156 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

gcrous, but they have no food, and bear meat is good.

They tie the dogs far back above the cave, and look
well to their bows and arrows. Then the man creeps
down and with two pieces of flint starts a fire in front
of the cave.

No animal can build a fire. Animals are all very cur-
ious about it, though. Did you ever watch a young cat
in front of a grate fire, the first he has ever seen? He
is terribly curious about the strange flickering of the
flame.

So is the bear in the cave. Besides, the smoke chokes
it. The bear comes out with two cubs. It ambles towards
the flame. The cubs follow. Curiously they nose about
it. The man and the boy wait behind boulders above.
Then they loose their arrows. The arrows fly straight.
They are good hunters. In a trice the cubs are killed but
not the mother bear. Wounded and bleeding, enraged
at the death of her cubs she charges up the hillside.
Both bows twang as two more arrows fly and the man
and the boy dodge behind boulders farther up. The
man shoots another arrow through the bear's eye, just
as she strikes at the boy. Her forepaw claws down the
boys leg, but the bear falls dead. The man staunches
the bleeding leg with leaves and what grass he can find.
But the boy is helpless for days.

Afterwards when the boy became a man himself he
remembered the place with the roots good to eat, and
the strange creatures that flew in the air. He and others
with him came north and made this their home, at least
for a time.

* * *

And as the glaciers drew back, the plants and trees,

JUST-BEFORE-NOW PAGE FOUR 157

the animals and finally mankind moved farther and
farther north.

This is a true story. It happened in Europe and it
happened in North America. I do not know the name
of any of the men and women, boys or girls. But I
know it is true. Mammoth bones have been found
among the glacial gravels, in Europe and in America,
and in burial places we find the bones of the men, and
animals, bones and arrows with them.

But, you say, "There are no tigers or elephants or
camels or rhinoceros in North America." Not now, but
there were. Their bones are found. And the tools of
the man and the boy, and pictures they drew on the
rocks. I have seen some of their pictures in Arizona.
Many of the things they used are found in Mexico.
Some day you can see for yourself. There are, also,
many of their pictures in the caves of Europe.

Those warm- weather animals left in America, the
mammoths, elephants, camels and others, were killed
when the final glaciers came down. Perhaps they starv-
ed because there was so little food. We do not have
sabre-toothed tigers now but we have lynx and bob-cat.
Both belong to the tiger family.

Just when man came to North America in the first
place we do not know. Nor how he came. But most
people think that he came here from Asia across
Behring Sea to Alaska, and then down the continent,
and thence spread from several centres over the eastern
part, and along the northern coast. When the white
men first came to North America they found the In-
dians living here, and the Eskimo. But that was many
thousands of years after the glaciers had melted away.

PART III

THE EARTH A TREASURE
STOREHOUSE

INTRODUCTION

HAVE YOU READ about the pirates of the Spanish
Main? They were sea robbers, lying in wait for the
Spanish ships from the New World ships laden with
gold and silver and precious stones Treasure !

Do you belong to a club? If you do you have a pres-
ident, a secretary and a 'treasurer'. The treasurer keeps
account of all the money belonging to the club.

Even a country, no matter how small or large it is,
has its Treasurer' or Treasury Department'. In
United States or in Canada, each state and each prov-
ince has its 'State Treasurer' or its Treasury Depart-
ment'. Each treasurer is in charge of the money spent
by its Federal, State or Provincial Government.

What do we mean by 'treasure* ? Of course you know.
A 'treasure' is something precious, something valuable.

What things are valuable ?

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162 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

To the pirate of the Spanish Main, the gold, silver
and precious stones were valuable. But why were they
valuable? He could wear a few diamonds and rubies,
or gold rings in his ears, but only a few. No, these
things were not valuable to him just because he wanted
to have them, but because he could sell them and get
the things he wanted. Maybe he wanted to buy ships,
maybe adventures, maybe he wanted power, maybe
fine clothes.

The treasurer of a club or of a country takes charge
of the money belonging to the club or to the country.
But the money is not valuable in itself, but for the things
it can buy. It may be sheets of music, if it be a music
club, or rolls of film if it be a camera club. If it be a
science club the money may be used to carry on some
great experiment that will help all the country or all
the world. The money belonging to a country may be
used for roads, or hospitals, or education. These are
the things that make our lives comfortable and happy.

What are the treasures of the Earth? For the most
part they are common, everyday things. Some of them
we have without trouble, without thought. One way to
understand how important they are to us is to think of
doing without them.

What would you do if the sun never shone? Could
you grow food? You could not get along without sun-
shine.

What would you do without water? You would soon
die. Many people have died because they could not get
it.

INTRODUCTION 163

The sun shines and we do not have to do anything
about it. But someone before us has worked hard that
we might have water, from a tap, or from a pump.

What would you do without well, nails or screws ?
They are very common, not beautiful! But just think
of all the ways nails and screws are used. It would not
be very easy to do without them.

What would you do without well, mud? The com-
mon soil in which we grow our food! You could not
have a garden or farm without soil.

So many common things are treasures! And these
are the things we really need in life, not the stones that
glitter. The stones are beautiful and we all want beauti-
ful things. But first we need the treasures that make us
comfortable and happy so that we can enjoy the beauti-
ful things.

Our Earth is full of treasures. Some are free, like
the sunshine. But for most of them we must work.
There are very many treasures in the Earth. I will tell
you of only a few. Some are so common we hardly re-
member they are treasures. But they are, and if we had
to do without them we would feel very sorry for our-
selves.

CHAPTER I

GOLD

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily

or to add another hue

Unto the rainbow

King John WM. SHAKESPEARE

NEARLY EVERYONE has seen gold, and many people
have something made of gold.

Do you have a fountain-pen? If you have, look at
the nib. It is gold. Someone in your home may have a
gold watch, or a gold ring, or a locket. Sometimes we
read of very wealthy Indian princes eating from gold
plates. It sounds like the Arabian Nights. But, there
really are gold plates and they do not all belong to In-
dian princes.

Gold, pure gold, is yellow like sunshine. It does not
change colour. It does not tarnish. Neither acids in the

165

166 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

air nor in water change it. That is one reason it is so
valuable. But there are some chemicals that will dis-
solve it, given time, a long, very long time. Fortunate-
ly they are not often found together. Gold will wear
off but not rust off. Pure gold lasts almost forever.

Gold is really quite soft. You can hammer it flat
Sometimes churches have parts of the ceiling and pil-
lars covered with gold hammered thin. I have seen one
in Peru. Gold-leaf, men call it. But most of the gold we
use is not pure. Pure gold is too soft to be useful. It
has to be mixed with other things to harden it. When
your grandfather was a boy and long before that, gold
was mixed with copper. It was reddish-yellow in colour.
We call it old gold. Now, gold is usually mixed with a
little silver, making it a cold, clear colour white gold.

OF WHAT USE IS GOLD?

All the world seems to be struggling for gold.

Yet on an island in the far north, in a desert, or in
any other lonely place gold is of no use. On a desert
island you want a fish-hook, a rifle, water or fruit. You
probably could not live very long without them. But
you could get along there without any trouble if you
did not have gold at all.

Why do we struggle for gold then? How do we
use it?

It is beautiful, so we use it for its beauty for the
watches and rings and lockets of which I have spoken.
There are many more very beautiful ornaments and
useful things like bowls or vases, too many to write
down.

We use gold for other things. It is used for mending
teeth. Even if you do not have a gold watch or ring or

GOLD 167

locket, you see people almost every day with gold in
their teeth. Why is it used there ? Because acids in the
mouth do not dissolve or tarnish it. Pure gold lasts long-
er than almost anything else. There are many other
ways too in which gold is used because of its purity.

But none of these is the reason the world struggles
for gold.

It is scarce. It is hard to find. It costs effort, time,
money. Men suffer and sometimes die to get it. Why?

Most boys and girls in North America have played
'Indian' at some time or other. When all dressed up in
your feathers you may want to get something from an-
other Indian, a friendly Indian. You do not want to
fight him for it. You want to buy from him. Indians did
not have money like ours. So you have no money when
you play Indian. What are you going to use for money?
You use what the Indians call 'wampum'. It may be a
string of shells. You cut off a piece of wampum when
you want to buy something; a little bit for something
cheap, like a wife; a long bit for something very valu-
able, like a tomahawk.

When the white man first came to North America he
had money, but he could not use it to buy from the In-
dians. They did not want it because they did not under-
stand it. They used the wampum for trade. The white
man did not have wampum. But he did have something
the Indians liked and wanted. He had bright beads, and
guns, and small glittering trinkets. The Indians liked
the bright beads, especially for their moccasins and
belts when they dressed up for war dances.

Some of the peoples of Africa and Asia still use cow-
rie shells for money.

168 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

These different kinds of money are all very well if
the trading is just in the tribe, or with others using
wampum or cowrie shells. But if people move around
and sell things from one country to another they have
to find something that the people in other countries
value. So gradually gold came into use for buying
things, and became money.

Did you ever see gold money? Probably not many of
you have done so. You cannot get it now, even at a
bank. But it is there just the same. Sometimes when
most of the gold in the world is moved into one coun-
try, other countries say it is of no use to them so they
do not use it for money any more. They begin trading
as boys trade. "I will give you a jack-knife for so many
marbles, " or, "I will give you so much of my wheat
for your Shipload of cloth." We say those countries
have gone off the 4 gold standard'.

The question is a big one. Why use gold that you
never see, for money? Some people think it should be
used and others that it should not. But this is not the
place to study that matter. What we want to know is,
some of the uses of gold. And money is one of them.

WHERE DO WE GET GOLD?

If gold is so very important, we should know some-
thing about where it is found. Gold is found in the
rocks in the Earth, and for centuries men have been tak-
ing it out of the rocks.

Let us go down into a gold mine to see how they get
it out.

First we go into a huge shed. Why is this, we won-
der? Because there is a great deal of machinery that

GOLD 169

must be protected from the weather. There is the top
of the elevators and shafts, and the electric dynamos
that pump air into the mines and keep the lights going
away down below the surface.

This is a big room, isn't it? and rather dark. We
must go over to that smaller room at the side. Well
get rubber coats, rubber boots, and helmets there. We'll
need them because it is wet in the mine and not very
clean. There will be crushed rock and dripping water,
which do make a mess.

What a funny elevator ! Wooden slats on the sides to
keep us in ! How do you like going down into a hole in
the earth ? We won't be taken right to the bottom, be-
cause this mine goes down very far into the Earth.
More than a mile ! Think of a mile along the ground,
of a house that is a mile away from yours. Now think
of how deep is a hole a mile down. A long way, is it
not?

But we will only go down part of the way, perhaps
half a mile. That is deep enough to see what is done
in a gold mine.

The elevator has stopped. The slat door opens.
Don't stand up too high, or feel too proud of yourself
because you are down half a mile in the earth in a gold
mine. You are sure to bump your head if you do.

Here is a long tunnel with other tunnels branching
off from it. It is low and pretty narrow, and crowded
along the tunnel floor on one side is a narrow, rather
shaky track for the mine cars.

We don't need to be afraid of rocks falling on us
from the low ceiling, because it has been cemented over.

170 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

This has been done for the safety of the miners, and
of course for the safety of the visitors too.

The lights are a bit dim. But our eyes will get used
to this half-darkness soon. -There are some irregular
shoulders of rock jutting out that hide some of the
lights and make long irregular shadows.

You can see the miners further along in the tunnel.
They are shovelling broken rock into little cars that
look like glorified wheelbarrows. See how the cars are
wobbling along the narrow track. Flatten yourself
against the side of the tunnel so that they can pass, be-
cause the track is very near the wall.

Let us follow behind the line of cars. It is rough
walking, with the water sludging up between the ties,
and the loose chunks of rock that have fallen from the
cars. I am glad we have rubber clothing. There is wa-
ter dripping everywhere from the uncovered parts of
the roof and sides of the tunnel. It reflects the lights
and adds to the shadow confusion.

The tunnel is widening into a gallery. It is almost
a room. There are several miners here. The cars have
stopped. The rock is being dumped into a big hole.

Come over to this side and look down into the hole.
See those two steel plates with great rows of steel teeth
all across the flattened surface. They are moving back
and forth. They rub against one another, crushing the
rocks in between. The motion is almost like rolling
something between your hands. But the toothed plates
chew up the rocks. The crushed rock material falls on to
a carrier below which takes it to a shaft and up to a mill.

Now let us go back to the elevator and up to the
mill to see what happens to the crushed rock.

GOLD 171

It is good to be up in the daylight again. First, let us
take off our rubber things. They are so hot. The mill
is above ground, so we do not need the rubber clothes.

What a terrific noise the machinery makes here ! We
cannot hear ourselves speak.

First, we will go over there where the crushed rock
enters the building. There is a revolving mill. Revolv-
ing is not quite the right word, because it is not going
round and round, but turning this way and that.

The rock is crushed pretty fine in the mill. Now it
moves on down into a great boiler-like crusher, that
is filled with steel balls of all sizes from a golf ball to a
tennis ball. The rock is whirled around and around, and
ground finer and finer until it is just a powder. Then it
is passed through a fine screen or sieve. There are 200
wires to an inch in that sieve. Very fine indeed !

The next thing that happens is a bit difficult to under-
stand. You really need to know a little chemistry. The
rock powder is mixed with water and a chemical called
cyanide of potash, and is passed down through a row
of rubber-faced discs. The gold solution gets inside the
discs but the fine powdered rock sticks to the rubber.
Then air is pumped into the discs. The rubber-facing
puffs out and out like the cheeks of old King Cole.
The cheeks puff out so much they touch a scraper near-
by, which rubs off the rock powder. It falls into water
and is carried down into a ditch. This thrown-out rock
powder looks like grey goo, and is called failings'. You
can see it in great ponds near mining places.

The gold-bearing liquid is cleaned out of the discs.
The gold is then separated from the water.

Where does the gold go then? It is taken into an-

172 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

other building and the few impurities left are taken
from it. Now it is pure gold, and is melted into a brick
a gold brick which is very heavy !

Then it may be sent to a mint, where it is made into
money, or it may be just weighed and valued, There is
a mint in Washington, and there is a Royal Mint at
Ottawa. There is a Royal Mint in London, England,
too, and in other world capitals.

HOW DOES THE GOLD GET INTO THE ROCK?

Did you see any gold in that dark rock down in the
mine? I did not, and probably you did not either.
Where is it, then?

Usually it is in such fine particles that you cannot see
it. But there it is all the same. Generally it is in tiny
flecks in veins of hard white quartz rock. The quartz
vein may be wide and clear, or it may be just a thin
streak criss-crossing another rock. Sometimes gold is
found in detached, pebble-like blebs of all sizes that
are mixed in with gravel.

But how did it get there ?

In the first place gold comes from great depths where
the heat is so great the rock is melted. In this great heat
all or nearly all the water in the rocks becomes steam.
In the steam-vapours are other gases, and even dissolv-
ed minerals. Some men believe even gold may be there
in solution in the steam. For gold, as we read before,
will dissolve in some things with time and a high tem-
perature. Other men believe the gold is dissolved in
water that has not turned to steam. There are minute
quantities of gold even in sea-water now.

GOLD 173

But how does the gold get up near the surface where
the miners can reach it?

Melted Masses

Do you remember what happens when mountains are
born? The surface of the Earth heaves up. The space
beneath is filled with melted rock which is welling up
slowly. And, in some places, there is gold in these great
masses of melted rock. As the rock slowly rises it cools,
becomes stiff and finally is hard and crystalline. As I
explained before (page 11) many minerals are in crys-
tals because of the slowness of the cooling of the hot
melted rock beneath the surface. There may be a great
dome-shaped mass of rock lying, perhaps hundreds of
feet, below the surface. It has bowed up the rock above
it into a mountain range. Above it through the centuries
the wind, rain, ice and rivers wear down the mountain-
sides. Some is worn off here, some there. Patches of the
dome of slowly-cooled rock are laid bare, like spots of
grass on the hillside when spring is wearing off the snow
and ice. And there in it, in places, is the gold.

Fault Faces

When mountains are heaved up the sides cannot al-
ways stand the strain of pushing. Sometimes cracks are
made in the rocks and one side is shoved up over the
other. The hot melted rock pressing up from below
pushes into the lower end of those great breaks, steals
along the face of the fallen blocks and in and out of
any hole or slit it may find. And in front of it, the melt-
ed rock pushes the vapours and gases, some of which
may have gold, or the water bearing the gold solutions is
thrust upward by the expanding gases and vapours.

174 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

These great broken rock faces are called 'faults', and
gold is found in some places along them.

Dikes and Veins

And everywhere along these great breaks are smaller
cracks. The strain of mountain-building is felt for miles
on either side. Not all the rock will break, but much of
it may crack. The cracks close or widen with the moun-
tain movement. They may be several feet across or less
than an inch. And into these cracks, too, a thin stream
of the boiling rock will push, thrust up from below.

The stream of melted rock becomes a thin rivulet.
The vapour becomes a mere wisp, or the water a thin
sheet. The rock is cooled more quickly now because it
is a narrow vein. It stiffens. The vapour wisps and wa-
ter are cooler too. The rock finally hardens. There may
be gold in it, and quartz too, for quartz, like the gold,
is likely to be in the vapour or water solutions. Melted
rock that cools in cracks like this is called a Vein' or
'dike 1 .

Sheets

In places the gold and quartz-laden vapours and wa-
ter moving along in front of the melted rock find a thin
slaty bed. They press their way in along the surface of
the bed. They made a thin sheet of rock. When they
cool, quartz and gold may be found there too.

It is very difficult to know why the quartz and gold
choose one bed instead of another. But it has been no-
ticed that very often the gold is found in beds of slaty
rock.

The gold-bearing rock whether it fills in cracks or is
in sheets, like the large masses of melted rock, may

GOLD 175

cool far below the Earth's surface. But after many
thousands of years, the surface is worn away, and these
rocks, too, are laid bare with their rock-filled cracks
and gold-filled slates.

Very often the filling in the crack is harder than the
rock itself. The weaker rock on the sides of the crack
wears, leaving the solid crack standing up like a ridge.

Volcanoes

Gold is sometimes brought to the surface too when
melted rock is hurled from volcanoes. Volcanoes long
ago threw out small quantities of gold, and living vol-
canoes are still throwing out some.

GOLD IN QUEER PLACES
Gravel

But gold is not always found buried in the hard rock.
Sometimes it is found loose in gravel along streams and
other places. How did it get there? Well, the winds,
frost and rivers may wear down a mountain-side which
is crossed and re-crossed by great breaks, or by gold-
bearing veins. The ice cracks off great boulders. The
river at the foot of the mountain helps to break up the
boulders into smaller pieces. Parts of the rock are dis-
solved and soon the big boulders become little bould-
ers. They are rolled down the river-bed, becoming
smaller and smaller, until they are just gravel. The
boulders with the gold that was once on the mountain-
side gradually becomes separated from the rock that
holds it. Most waters do not have the chemicals which
help to dissolve gold. So the gold remains mixed in with
the rock pebbles. And they all roll downstream together.
But gold is heavier than most other rocks and drops

176 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

sooner. The pebbles of gold in the river gravels are
called 'nuggets'.

The great gold rush to California and later to the
Klondike in northern Canada was for pebble gold, or
'placer' gold as it is called. There is a lot of it in South
America, too, in Peru and in other places.

When people with little training go out to look for
gold, they are called prospectors'. They may be untrain-
ed but they learn a lot just by trying. The first prospec-
tors at a placer stream 'pan' the gold. They dip up a
panful of the gravel and water. They shake it and
shake it, letting the small stones on top fly over the
edge of the pan. The heavy gold pebbles are finally left
together in the bottom and can be picked out.

There is gold in gravels in northern Canada and
Alaska. But the gravels are all frozen together for
many feet below the surface. They are melted with
great streams of water. The gravels are scooped up
then by machinery and ground up into fine bits. Then
they are put through great water sluices where the finer
crushed rock is carried off, and the gold recovered.

Gold May Be in Water

Men once thought that gold could not be dissolved,
because acids would not 'eat' it. But now it has been
found that it can be dissolved when certain other ele-
ments are present. It takes a long time. But gold is dis-
solved and is carried away in water. Not all water con-
tains gold, not even the ocean has enough to 'drop' it
in any quantity.

But, if there is too much gold and other minerals
for the water to hold, even when dissolved, some of

GOLD 177

the gold may 'settle' out. And there is the gold, some-
times in the most unexpected places.

But of course this gold, too, first came from great
depths in the Earth.

HOW OLD IS GOLD?

Most of the gold in the world is found in the very
old strong rocks that were shifted and tossed, melted
and perhaps remelted. It may be as old as the beginning
of the world so far as we know.

But there is some gold in the younger rocks too, in
Olden Time, and indeed in Just-Before-Now-Time. For
always when mountains are born rocks are cracked in
many places. And water and vapours carrying gold and
quartz and other things fill in the cracks. These are
veins and dikes that I have told you about before.

In Australia there are gold-bearing veins in rocks
which were laid down during the time the trilobites
flourished and grew prosperous. That is much later than
the gold-bearing rocks of the Canadian Shield where
the very old strong rocks are.

The Rocky Mountains and the Andes, you remember,
are quite young for mountains. They, too, have gold
but it was formed many millions of years after the gold
in the time of the Australian trilobites.

And, of course, as we have told you gold is being
separated from the rocks all the time, and is found in
gravels.

Add It All Up

So, you see, gold may be found in rocks formed at
any time from the beginning of the Earth until now.

178 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

PLACES WHERE MEN FIND GOLD NOW

It is very important that we know where to look for
gold. Not everybody can find it. But if we know a little
about how it was formed we know better where to look
for it.

Since gold comes up from great depths one place to
look for it, we have found, is where there has been
mountain-building. That is, the places on the Earth
where mountains now stand, or where there are the
roots of ancient mountains.

North America

There is much gold found in North America. On the
great Canadian Shield it occurs across the north of
Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, where the long-ago
mountains are worn down. It is found along the dikes
and veins that poured into the cracks when the rocks
were crushed into mountains. A little of it occurs in
Michigan and Minnesota, in the very southern part of
the Great Shield.

In the east some gold is found in Nova Scotia, and
in the Appalachian Mountains, right down into Alaba-
ma. There is not nearly as much, though, as up on the
Canadian Shield. This gold in Eastern United States is
found in rocks of different ages. You remember the
Appalachians were pushed and twisted several times.
Each time melted rock welled up from below and the
gold-bearing solutions and vapours were thrust up
through the fissures. In Nova Scotia, the gold is in the
rocks of Page One, and also at the beginning of Olden
Time, Page Two. But farther south the gold vapours
and solutions pushed through much later. Some of them
came when there were ice fields near the Equator.

GOLD 179

Gold is found along the Pacific coast. The Coast
Range here was raised up from Behring Straits all the
way south to Lower California.

In many places along the sides of the pushed-up
rocks in Alaska, in Yukon Territory, in British Colum-
bia, and in California gold is found. It is also found in
the Sierra Nevada Mountains in northern California.
The gold, then, in these rocks is many millions of years
younger than that in the Canadian Shield. It came dur-
ing Middle Time.

And then gold is found farther east in the Rocky
Mountains of British Columbia, Idaho and Montana,
and all down the mountain range to Mexico. In Mon-
tana it is in the ancient rocks that were once laid in the
Rocky Mountain trough. It welled up from below and
pushed into them when the rocks in the trough were
raised to mountains in Middle Time. The gold farther
south is mostly in the younger rocks that were made in
Just-Before-Now-Time.

South America

And gold is found in South America, too, in many
places all along the Andes. You remember the stories
of the Spanish treasure brought from America.

Africa

But the greatest gold country of the world is the
Rand, in South Africa, where the rocks are strongly
folded, crushed and twisted.

And Other Countries

Gold is found in Europe, too, in Australia, in Russia,
India, China, Japan. Indeed, there are few countries
in which no gold at all has been found.

180 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

And so gold is one of the treasures in the Earth's
great storehouse. It has been brought up to us when
the rocks were being crushed and pushed about. When
the Earth's crust was being torn asunder the precious
gold came up.

CHAPTER II

COPPER

WHERE DID THE WORD 'copper' come from? The
Romans got the copper they used, and they used a lot
of it, from the island of Cyprus. So they called the
metal 'cyprium'. Look at your maps again. (1 hope you
have not put them away.) Cyprus is an island in the
eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Later the word
was shortened to 'cyprum'. Then a long time after it
was spelled differently and written 'cuprum'. From that
grew our word 'copper'. In France the word grew into
'cuivre', and in Germany it became 'Kupfer'.

SOMETHING ABOUT COPPER

Like Red Gold

Try to get a new cent or penny from the bank. Look
at it. Put it beside a piece of gold, a ring or watch. It
is redder than the gold, isn't it, a warmer colour? I
hope you have a copper kettle in your house. Long ago
there were copper pots in every kitchen. I remember an
old grey-green copper pot which stood on three legs.
It was supposed to be old-fashioned when I was a child,
and so was kept out in the woodshed. Copper pots are
no longer old-fashioned. They are prized now. But they
are not used for cooking. They are polished bright
enough for a mirror, and stand glowing in a place of
honour, holding the biggest fern possible.

When it is polished bright as a mirror pure copper

181

182 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

is redder than gold. But things can happen to its colour.
Is there a copper roof in your village or city? Look at
some church, or library, or city hall, a big building. You
may find a copper roof. Copper can be hammered or
moulded into sheets. And as sheets it is used to cover
roofs.

But maybe you cannot tell whether it is copper !

For you should not look for a reddish, copper-col-
oured roof, but a bright green roof, a regular sea-green
one. If it is dry copper stays copper-coloured. But out-
of-doors where it is rained upon, copper turns green.
A green roof capping a light stone building is beautiful
against a blue sky.

Throw some copper scraps, a bit of copper wire will
do, into a hot grate fire. Watch the flame turn green.

Copper alone, then, is a red-gold colour, but when
dampened or burned it becomes green.

Copper Is Soft

Copper, like gold, is soft. It can be heated and pulled
out into wire, so thin you think it will break. But
although soft, it is strong and will not break easily.
Look at the telegraph and telephone wires. Sometimes
they shine in the sun. Did you ever see telephone men
unrolling great spools of wire, stringing it up on poles
or pushing it through underground conduits? Watch
them next time. It is copper wire. Or, better still, if you
do not want to wait until new wires are being put up,
unfasten the wire ends of an electric plug. Copper wire
again!, It is one of the best materials to conduct the
electric current.

You know yourself that copper is soft. That is why
you can work with it in your manual training class. It

COPPER 183

bends. You can hammer it into whatever shape you
want.

ALLOYS

Pure copper is soft! But, sometimes we want to use
it, and have it strong and firm. Then it has to be mixed
with something else. When two metals are fused or
heated and mixed together the mixture is called an 'al-
loy*. That just means it is not pure. But like the stiffen-
ed copper it may be stronger and much more useful
than either metal by itself.

Brass

Copper and zinc fused or melted together make
brass. Think of all the things that are made of brass.
Look at your brass buttons! Hear that band coming
down the street! It is a brass band. Most of its instru-
ments are made of brass. They give out clear, pure
notes. Brass is yellower than copper, more like gold
in colour.

Bronze

Copper and tin mixed make bronze. Next time you
are walking in a park look at some of the statues of
great men. They are a dark brown. Touch them. See
how smooth they are. They are bronze. Why is bronze
used? Because the rains do not change it. We are so
used to the word bronze meaning brown colour that
we often say 'bronzed by the sun* when we mean tanned.

We really use more brass and bronze than we do
pure copper. Think of all the copper, brass, and bronze
things you know. Count them. See how many are cop-
per, or brass, or bronze.

184 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

HUMAN USES

You know many ways in which we use copper now.
You have counted them. But the use of copper is no
discovery of ours. It was made into many things long
ago.

One day more than eighty years ago, far away in
the Central Provinces of India, some shepherd boys
were crossing the country with their cattle, probably
driving them from one green spot to another. They
were crossing a bit of waste land. One boy saw some-
thing queer half-buried in the earth. The boys all ran
to it. It had a very odd shape. They brought it back
to their master. It was a bit of an old copper tool.

The English governor of the area knew that some-
thing unusual had been found. So the place where the
copper tool was found was set apart to be studied. Men
who study about old tools began to dig there. In one
place, about three feet long and three feet wide and
four feet deep, they found 424 copper tools and wea-
pons and 102 pieces of thin silver plates. They were
all of very odd shapes, not like tools used now at all.
It was very clear that at one time long ago many things
were made of copper. Perhaps this was a storehouse of
someone who sold them. Who knows ?

How Long Has It Been Used?

The story of the use of copper is very old. You re-
member we learned that primitive men lived in caves,
and that the things that are found in these caves now
show how those early people lived? The oldest tools
known were made of stone : stone knives and roughly-
shaped tools of various kinds. Later men became more
skilful and learned about copper. Not only did they

COPPER 185

learn to use it but they learned to mix it with zinc to
make it stronger. They made so many tools of the two
fused together that now we speak of those people as
the men of the 'Bronze Age'. So copper has been used
for a long, long time.

In India there was a copper statue of Buddha, more
than seven feet high. It is now in England. A well-
known Chinese traveller in India, Hiyuen-Tsang, says
he once saw another great copper statue of Buddha
more than eighty feet high, in a small village. From the
workmanship he thought it was made about 1,200 years
ago. It cannot be found now.

I hope you have your map. Look at Burma. There
is a great brass bell there, the second largest bell in use
in the world. It is sixteen feet across. It is so deep that
if three men stand on one another's shoulders the top
man can hardly touch the top of the bell.

So, copper, brass and bronze were used long, long
ago.

When the early explorers went up the rivers and
across the forests in New York State, and the Atlantic
States, and in Canada, they found the Indians had cop-
per ornaments and copper tools. In the east the copper
was mainly used in the ornaments. As the explorers
went farther west and north they found fewer orna-
ments and more tools. It seemed that copper was more
common. The nearer they came to Michigan and Wis-
consin the more it was used for everyday things. After
some time they found where the Indians got their cop-
per. It was near Lake Superior in the Keweenaw penin-
sula. This is still an important centre for the copper
supply in North America. This great copper country

186 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

stretches north into Canada, and south into Michigan.
There is more copper in Michigan than in Canada.

The early explorers even found pits with charcoal
and wooden bowls. The Indians broke the copper-bear-
ing rocks by heating them and pouring cold water over
the hot rock to make it crack. There were great ham-
mers for pounding it loose.

WHAT AND WHERE IS COPPER

Copper is one of the treasures in the Earth's store-
house. It is stored in many places. Some is found in
some soils, not much of it, but it is there. It is found in
some mineral waters. It has even been discovered in
seaweed. A tiny bit occurs in cheese, eggs, hay, meat
and other foodstuffs, especially liver and kidneys. But,
of course, none of these is a good place to get it. The
amounts are too small.

Most copper is found in rocks. In fact, it is the only
metal that occurs free, by itself, in large amounts. You
remember when talking of 'igneous' rocks we learned
that each mineral has its own shape of crystal. Well,
the copper crystal is a cube, the same size up, across and
through. It is often flattened, though, and sometimes
the crystal edges are not sharp like the cube but are
rounded off. But a great deal of copper is not in crys-
tals. Some of it is found woven through the rock like
fine threads, twisted in and out of cracks, or in moss-
like masses. In some places it is found with silver. Or,
it may not be free at all, but united with some other
mineral or chemicals, so that it looks quite different. No
matter with what it is united, it always burns with a
beautiful green colour, or sometimes when cold it has
a group of colours, like the 'eye' of a peacock's tail.

COPPER 187

How Do We Get It Out?

When copper is free it is easy to get it out. There are
some copper mines that do not look like mines at all.
The copper is near the surface and the rain and the
air have just rotted away the material in which it lies.
Because the copper beds are at the surface, the miners
just dig away the hillside. A lot of the copper occurs
like this in Arizona and Utah. There is a big copper
mine in the hillside at Salt Lake City, all above ground.
Of course, there are some other impurities in it that
have to be separated from it.

When copper is bound up tightly with some other
metals or minerals it is another story. It has to be
'smelted'. That means a lot of things have to be done
to it to break it out from the rock and to make it clean,
pure copper, so that it can be used. There are three
ways of cleaning it: the 'dry* way, the 'wet* way, and
by electricity.

The 'dry* way is used for rock that has a lot of cop-
per in it. It is roasted, usually with coke. And some of
the impurities are separated from it. But not all, not
iron. Then it is mixed with some other things. This is
chemistry again. When you are old enough to study
chemistry, you will learn what these othef things are.
However, when it is all melted the iron that has been
tightly bound up with the copper leaves it, and joins the
other mixture. So the copper can be taken off purer
still. It is nearly pure now, but not quite. It is white, at
this stage, called 'white metal'. It is roasted again and
other impurities run off. Now the copper is pure!

Different kinds of roasting furnaces are used in dif-
ferent countries. Some of them are shaken so that the

188 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

heavier minerals will drop more quickly to the bottom.
Some of them are made hotter by blowing or 'blasting'.
But whichever kind of furnace is used the copper is
made pure by the roasting.

Then there is the Vet' way. It is used for rock which
does not have much copper. It is really chemistry and
a little hard to understand yet. The rock is crushed
and put into a mixture that dissolves it. Do you remem-
ber salt will just drop from the water in a glass when
the water can hold no more ? Well, water, or any other
liquid, can hold some things longer than others. So all
the metals that drop out first, before the copper, are
taken away. When the copper drops out, it is like a
salt, too, and still has a few other minerals with it.
Then the copper salt can be put into another liquid, arid
the copper made to drop out, pure.

And then there is the electric way. That is perhaps
still harder to understand. But an electric current is sent
through the mixed-up coppery mass. It separates the
other minerals from the copper. The electric current is
really the easiest way. Men knew about it for a long
time. At first they could not make a current strong
enough. Then somebody invented the great dynamo.
And presto! There was a strong current! Next time
you are near a power-house go in, if they will let you,
and look at the dynamo. You will not be able to see how
it works, but you can see what it looks like.

You remember gold and silver are mixed with cop-
per in some rocks. The gold and silver are also separat-
ed out by the electric current, and saved, so that such
copper-bearing rock is doubly valuable.

COPPER 189

Where Found?

Fortunately copper is found in a great many places
in the world. In Europe it is found in England, Spain,
Portugal, Germany. In England it is found in Cornwall
near the great tin mines. So the Cornish people learned
early to mix it with tin and make bronze. It is found
in South Australia. In Asia it is found in Siberia and
Japan. In South America, it is found in Chile and Peru.
A great deal of it is found in Africa. In North America
it is mined in Mexico, United States and Canada. The
largest copper mines of pure copper, as we have learn-
ed, are around Lake Superior.

So the next time you work with copper in your man-
ual training class, or see one of those green copper
roofs, remember that it is one of the treasures stored in
the Earth.

CHAPTER III

TIN

TIN IN OUR LIVES!

That Old Tin Can!

PICK IT OFF THE ROAD, that old tin can. It may cut
somebody's motor tire. How did it get there? It must
have fallen from a garbage wagon. Poor, forlorn, de-
serted, tin can, full of holes ! Once it stood in a soldier-
like row with other tins, all the same size, all the same
shape, all having the same picture on their rounded
sides. Tinned peaches on the shelf of a grocery store!
And the tin pails we use for holding dew worms, or
for carrying water until the holes appear ! First there
is a rust spot, then a hole !

Now tin does not rust. And yet a tin pail will have
holes. The reason is your pail and the tin can are not

190

TIN 191

really tin. They are iron with only a thin coating of tin.
The tin wears off. The iron rusts through.

Once tin pails were really tin pails. We just never
changed our habit of calling them so.

But pails of pure tin would be very expensive, and
too heavy. Steel is much lighter. But steel, like iron,
rusts unless specially treated. Someone got the bright
idea of covering the steel with tin, so that dampness
would not reach it, and then it would not rust. But we
still call them tin pails and tin cans. And when the tin
wears off they still rust.

How to Make Tin Cans

Bars of mild steel are cut the length wanted, heated
and rolled between heavy rollers into thin sheets. The
sheets are doubled over, heated again, rolled and doub-
led again. This is done several times. Then they are
pulled apart, rolled out when they are cold, and smooth-
ed and trimmed. They are made hard by plunging into
cold water while still hot. Then the sheets are cleaned
with weak acid. The thin clean sheets are just dipped
into melted tin, a thin coating of which sticks to them.
They are then passed through an oil bath. When they
have been cleaned again after all this, behold! A
smooth bright sheet which looks like tin, but which is
much lighter in weight. The tinned sheet is then ready
for making into cans or pails or whatever is needed.
Tin-foil

In a candy shop you look for chocolates. Chocolates
are good! If they are fresh they are good, but not so
good if they are dry. But those wrapped in tin- foil over
there will be fresh and good I

Why are they wrapped in tin- foil? To keep the air

192 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

out, so the candies won't get dry. A lot of things are
wrapped in tin-foil to keep them fresh. You often see
them, I am sure.

What is tin-foil? It is just tin hammered out very,
very thin. In China a great many children work hard
year after year hammering tin into paper-thin sheets.
In Europe and America machinery is used. And can
you believe it? one pound of tin can be rolled so thin it
will cover 18,000 square inches. Aluminum can be rolled
to cover twice that area.

Sandy Through the Looking-glass

Sandy breaks his mirror. Let us look at it. We can
really see what a mirror is like. It is glass on one side,
isn't it? What is on the other side? This is an old mir-
ror, for that something on the other side is a mixture
of tin and mercury or quicksilver.

Mirrors with a mercury-tin mixture on the back have
been known for some hundreds of years, since the
time in history that men call the * Middle Ages'. About
a hundred years ago, though, another way of making
mirrors was invented. Silver was put on the back. Silver
is generally used now because it is easier to make and
lighter in weight. But the backing of tin and mercury
really lasts longer. It does not 'fog' so quickly, and it
sticks to the glass better.
That Tea-kettle Again!

And then there is your tea-kettle. Of course there are
several kinds of tea-kettles. I hope yours is one of the
best. Perhaps it is a little worn on the curves at the top.
What is that you can see where the tin is worn off? It
is copper ! Tin is used to cover copper. Copper has some
quality which makes it easy for other metals to adhere

TIN 193

to it. A great many pots and pans and other everyday
things are made in that way. There are not quite so
many as in your grandmother's time, because now
chromium is often used instead of copper. Chromium is
generally kept, however, for more expensive things,
like the shiny parts of motor cars.

Copper does not rust, so tin over copper does not
rust. But it is not so cheap as tin over iron.

And then, in addition to the tin-covered copper you
remember there is a mixture of tin and copper that is
called 'bronze', known for hundreds of years. It is still
one of the most important metals for parts of machin-
ery where two metal surfaces rub. Thousands of tons
are used in the big guns, in recoil slides and in marine
engines to reduce friction.

Jingle Bells

Have you heard the bells of the Peace Tower in
Ottawa, or of the singing tower in Florida? Or if not,
just listen to the church bells some frosty morning.
Think of the clear note of a beautiful bell. We often
say the 'silver tone of bells'. But tin, too, is used in bells.
In Your Great-Grandmother's Kitchen

Is there pewter in your house? If you live in the
New England States, I will wager there is. Nowadays
people collect old pewter dishes. Modern pewter is
often smooth and highly polished. It is very beautiful.
The colour of pewter is quite like silver but just a little
darker, not quite so cold-looking. In former days pew-
ter was often made into very ornamental pitchers and
vases, candlesticks, and many other useful things. It
was used every day, much more so than now pewter
bowls, pewter spoons, pewter plates. >

194 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

What is pewter? It is tin mixed with lead and some
other metals.

WHAT is TIN?

Common tin, bright and beautiful, and so useful!
What is it?

Well, you certainly know its colour. You have seen it
often enough; light-coloured and shining. It does not
rust like iron. It can be made into sheets, so thin you
can crush them in your hand. Like copper it is so soft
it has to be mixed with something else to stiffen it. It
may be used as a thin covering over something firm.

Tin is one of the treasures of the Earth's storehouse.

Where Does It Hide?

In some places native tin and tin oxides occur like
grains in tiny cracks in rocks that have once been melt-
ed. Sometimes it is found in veins of rock. Do you re-
member we also find gold in veins? In Bolivia tin is
found with silver, and other valuable minerals and
metals. Tin, like gold, is found in 'placer' deposits. In
places on the Earth great quantities of it are found in
dark lumps called 'tinstone', or in some cases as beauti-
fully marked polished pebbles in gravels along stream-
beds. Like gold it became part of the gravel, because,
with the stones of the gravel, it too was once part of the
bedrock' from which the stones were broken off. It just
moved along with the other stones and was ground and
worn into smaller and smaller bits.

Bolivia, in South America, and Banka Island in the
East Indies have most of the tin trade of the world, or
did have it before World War Two. But they did not
always have it.

TIN 195

Tin of the Ancients

You remember the ancient men of the Bronze Age?
We learned that bronze is made of tin and copper. But
not all the bronze of the ancients was made of these
metals. Tin is mentioned in the Bible, but it is not really
tin. It is a mixture of copper and something else. This
mixture, which is called tin and is not, was known in
Egypt 1,600 years before Christ, and that is more
than 3,000 years ago.

You learned in your history that long ago the Phoe-
nicians came across from the eastern Mediterranean,
sailing around Spain and up the west of France, to the
south of England for tin.

Long after the Phoenicians the Romans came to Eng-
land. They found tin and used it. The Romans had very
tidy minds. They wrote things down. We know from
their writings they did not know all the differences be-
tween tin and lead at first. They knew, of course, one
was heavier than the other, and that the tin was whiter
than the lead. So they called the tin 'white lead'. By the
time Julius Caesar came over and conquered parts of
the island the Romans began to find large quantities of
tin in Cornwall and Devon. And during the first century
after Christ they began to carry it away in their ships.

Tin has been taken from Cornwall and Devon for
hundreds and hundreds of years. There is a long human
history of the tin-mining in Cornwall; the struggles the
miners had; the trade routes that tin travelled in the
early, early days; the way the miners fought for their
rights; the part played by the Duchy of Cornwall; the
money that came from it; the huge amounts of tin that

196 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

were sold out of England a long, long history! There
is not time to tell it here.

The Romans took away all the tin they could. After
more than four hundred years the Romans had to leave
Britain. And then the British themselves began to take
out tin, and kept taking it out. At first they took it from
the surface. Then they dug deeper into the gravels. It
was loose, dirt-covered tinstone. It was just dug out
with a pick and shovel, and the dirt washed from it in
a trough of water. The ground surface of the whole re-
gion was soon full of trenches and holes as more and
more tin was dug out. The trenches filled with water,
and had to be drained out.

The miners dug deeper to drain off the water. This
all meant labour. They had to find better ways of get-
ting the tin out from the sides of the holes. At first there
was no system or order. Everybody just took what he
thought he had a right to take. The whole place got
into a horrible mess of trenches and holes.

By the time Cornwall and Devon had been mined in
these irregular ways for hundreds of years, all the
loose tin was gone. But miners worked back and back,
and down and down, and at last found the parent rock
from which the tinstone had been broken off. Now they
are mining, not loose gravels, but the rock from which
the gravels were made.

How Is Tin Separated from the Rock?

When the tin is taken loose from the gravels it is
washed. The lighter clays, sand and stones are carried
away. But when it is in hard rock it is a different ques-
tion.

Like the copper it must be broken out of the solid

TIN 197

rock, brought out of the deep tunnels of the mines and
then ground to a powder, and put through sieves in a
trough of water. Then it, too, is roasted, usually in a
vibrating furnace to separate the tin from the impuri-
ties. In some countries where charcoal is cheap, they
use a furnace like a long shaft. A layer of charcoal and
then a layer of tinstone is put in, then another of char-
coal followed by another of tinstone, and so on. When it
is filled, fire is started at the bottom, and a big blast of
air is sent through the fire from below. It burns up with
a great heat, melting the tinstone. The charcoal burns
with the oxygen from the tinstone and then the pure
tin runs out at the bottom. In England and in many
other places coal is used for the furnaces.

After all this the tin is much purer, but not absolute-
ly pure. It is then melted, very carefully. The tin melts
quickly and is run off. Then it is 'poled 1 , that is, stirred
so that the purest tin rises to the top of the vat, like a
froth. It is skimmed and poured into moulds, making
long bars. Long, long ago, the tin was 'poled* by using
a branch from an apple tree. So for years and years, it
was thought that an apple branch was the only 'pole'
to use. A tree branch is no longer used, but .stirring the
boiling tin is still called 'poling'.

Now we have some very pure tin. It must be tested.
The bars are heated again, not very hot, but enough
almost to melt them. Then they are struck by hammers.
If the tin falls to the stone floor, splitting into a mass
of grainy strings, then the tin is pure.

Where Is the Tin of the Earth Stored?

You know about England, and about Bolivia. Did you
ever hear of Banka Island? You need your map. Turn

198 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

to the south of Asia, and just east of Sumatra, not far
from Malay peninsula, you will find Banka Island. It
holds the purest tin in the world. There is tin along
the Straits Settlements, and in Australia. In Europe,
besides England, it is found in Saxony, and in Bohemia.
Very little tin has been found in North America, not
enough to be worth mining. The great quantity used in
the United States and Canada is brought from other

countries.

* * *

And so tin is one of the treasures of the Earth, kept
in its storehouse until men want it enough to get it out
and to find how to use it

CHAPTER IV

OIL AND GAS

ANOTHER PAIR of twins! No, two branches of an im-
mense Family, closely related 1 Oil is a large Family all
by itself that sees the whole world in the travels of its
various members. Gas is a Family, not so large, more
of a stay-at-home, but very useful !

"Ho!" I hear you laugh, scornfully, u gas travels all
over the world in motor cars and bombers, and mos-
quito planes, flying fortresses, etc., etc.'*

Not so fast! That is not gas. That h gasoline, just
*gas' for short. And gasoline belongs to the Oil Fam-
ily, not to the Gas Family. Real gas travels in pipes and
can go only as far as the pipes carry it.

The Oil Family is very large. I do not suppose there
is a boy or girl that has not met some of the Family.

199

200 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

WHAT is OIL?

There is gasoline a very familiar friend. It makes
your car run. It is used for aeroplanes. When mixed
with air and made into a vapour it is exploded by an
electric spark. That explosion is called 'combustion'. It
moves a piston which moves something else and so on.
Such engines are called combustion engines, and gaso-
line is used for many of them. Farms use them for
pumping water. Your mother or sister use gasoline for
cleaning clothes. If they do not, then the Dry Cleaners
do.

When you go away for the summer to a northern
lake or a river, gasoline 'putt-putts' make the night hid-
eous, racing around going nowhere. Or, do you like
their noise?

Perhaps you go out to a farm for the summer. After
you leave the main line you go on a little train, with a
funny little chug-chug engine, a Diesel engine. The fuel
of that engine is oil, not very heavy oil but still a mem-
ber of the Family.

If you live on a farm, you know that in the spring
the farmer sat behind the tractor to do his ploughing,
and together he and the tractor drove around the field
like a great insect, hither and yon, but in an orderly
way. And the ploughing! It was done in a trice! The
tractor is run by a member of the Oil Family.

Perhaps some of you have been on a great ship at
sea, or even you may have seen a long greyhound ly-
ing quietly in a harbour, a battleship ! Not many years
ago ships were run by coal-heated steam. Now, the fuel
used is a member of the Oil Family.

Once I was on a ship in the Caribbean Sea, just off

OIL AND GAS 201

Trinidad, and a 'tanker' a ship bringing oil came up
alongside. She looked like a huge whale, rounded on
top so the waves could roll over her, except for a cen-
tral 'poop' which rose above the whale-back. Three or
four great, thick hose-like pipes came over our side,
each was fastened to a permanent pipe on our deck, and
oil was pumped in, right at sea. One careless little mid-
shipman forgot to turn off a cock at the right time, and
oil poured over the deck. The captain was angry, but
I saw the oil, heavy, dark, greasy stuff. You would
hardly think it belonged to the same Family as gasoline.
But it does.

All these oils we have been talking about belong to
one branch of the Oil Family Fuel oils. You know
most of them. It may be that you have an oil furnace in
your house.

Do you have to mow the lawn on Saturdays in June
when Saturdays are precious and grass grows quickly?
The lawn-mower is heavy. You oil it, perhaps with your
mother's sewing-machine oil.

After you have driven your car some hundreds of
miles you take it to be greased. And watch, if you can,
a locomotive engineer grease his shining engine. If your
bedroom door squeaks, you oil it. These oils that make
machinery run smoothly are called lubricants'. In some
:ases they are a thick sticky grease like vaseline, and
vaseline is one of them members of the Oil Family, all
6f them.

Ask your grandparents if they went to bed in the
dark. They did not have electricity then. What did they
use for light? Oil lamps! Kerosene! At first it was dis-
tilled from coal and called 'coal-oil'. Later when made

202 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

from natural oil it was still called coal-oil in parts of
the country, and kerosene elsewhere. Even now when I
go out on 'field work' at some farmhouses I go to the
kitchen for a lamp.

What is a lamp ? A bowl-like base filled with oil, in
it a wick which passes up through a slit and is lighted
at the upper end. The wick soaks up the oil which
burns brightly and steadily as long as there is oil in the
bowl.

When you are sunburned you put on cold cream. You
use oil in medicines, in mosquito and moth sprays, in
paints and varnishes, or any number of common ways.
All are members of the Great Oil Family. Mineral oils
they are sometimes called.

Did I hear someone say something about salad oil,
olive oil, oil of roses, peppermint oil ? Yes, these are all
oils. But they belong to another branch of the Family.
They are pleasant things. We like them for their
flavour or their fragrance. They are vegetable oils.

Have you that 'tired feeling', or are you too thin?
Then along comes someone, friend or foe, and suggests
or insists that you take cod-liver oil. They may dress it
up as an emulsion, or make it into a pill, but it is cod-
liver oil, and not very nice or it would not have to be
disguised.

But codfish are not the only oil producers in the sea.
Whale oil kills rose worms. I don't wonder! Did you
ever smell it? Eskimos use whale oil for lights and
whale blubber to eat. These, too, belong to a third
branch of the Great Oil Family. They are animal oils.

I have left out quite a number of the many cousins

OIL AND GAS 203

of the Family. But enough have been mentioned for you
to think up some more yourself.

WHAT USE IS GAS?

The Gas branch of the Family is something of a
Martha in the household. It stays at home and does
the cooking or the lighting. But there are two sub-
branches of the Gas group.

There is 'artificial' gas, that is, gas that is made. It
is not really 'made'. It is taken from coal. There is a
'gas works' on the edge of most cities, where it is made
and piped up and down all the streets and into houses.
A generation or two ago it was used for street lights.

Did your grandfather live in a city when a boy? I
will tell you one thing he saw. When darkness began to
fall, down the street came a man with a pole. He stop-
ped at a street lamp you see they still called them
lamps poked the pole up and by means of a little clip
he turned a cock just below the jet. Out came the gas.
You could not see it. But right on top of his pole was
a little lighter. He touched the light to the jet and the
light flashed on. The gas had caught fire. He went on
to the next lamp standard. A trail of light followed him
down the street.

Now, however, away off in an electric power-house,
some unseen, unknown person throws a switch and all
the lights pop out at once up and down the street.

But we still use gas in some houses for lighting, and
for stoves, though it, too, has been largely replaced by
electricity.

The house gas is artificial in most places. It is gen-
erally expensive because it has to be taken from the
coal. But there are places in the world, and in North

204 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

America, where ready-made gas comes right out of the
ground. It is piped far and near. It may be used just like
the 'made' gas for lighting and heating. And it is much,
much cheaper in the places where it can be obtained.

These gases are really not so different from one an-
other as they seem at first.

But gas, natural gas, does something else. It is al-
most like a Cinderella, in this, instead of a Martha.
The Oil branches of the Family when ready for use,
wander far and wide over the face of the Earth, over
the oceans and up in the air, but the gas, poor Cinde-
rella, helps to make them ready. It helps to bring the
oil from the ground. Read on and you will see how.
And when the oil is out of the ground, gas helps to sep-
arate the light and heavy oils and sends them out to
places where it itself can never go.

THE GREAT TRIBE OR FAMILY

Now this great Tribe or Family with many branches
in the Oil Family, and the not so many in the Gas
Family, has a name Hydrocarbon. The name means
it is made of hydrogen and carbon.

Did you burn your toast this morning? That black
you scraped off was carbon. Coal is mostly carbon, and
so is charcoal. So is sugar, strangely enough! Burn
some. See the same black stuff. Hydrogen is a gas.
Water is hydrogen and oxygen. You will have some ex-
periments with both when you study chemistry.

All living things must have carbon. When any plant
or animal dies some form of carbon is left So our great
Tribe or Family of Hydrocarbons must have had some-
thing to do with life. And they had, all of them, some-
where, some time, so men believe.

OIL AND GAS 205

That whale oil and cod-liver oil are connected with
life you see at once. It was made from food by the
processes of life of the whale and the codfish. The salad
oil, olive oil, oil of roses and all the rest are simple,
too, at least comparatively simple. They were made
during the processes of life of the plants from which
they came, made by the food the plants took from the
air and the soil.

But the Oil and the Gas in the Earth, from where did
they come? What had they to do with life? We get
them from the rocks deep in the Earth. They are not
rock, even though the Oil is called mineral oil.

Fill a dish with sand. Pour water over it. Quite a lot
of water can be poured in without making the dish any
fuller. The water fills in the tiny spaces between the
sand grains.

And oil-bearing and gas-bearing rocks must be por-
ous, either a sandstone or a rock filled with pores and
cracks.

But if life produced oil and gas, how did they get
in the rock? I think you begin to see. There are rocks
that were melted oil is not in these rocks and, there
are rocks that were laid in the sea. And in the sea was
life, plant life and animal life. And as each form died
it fell to the bottom and was entombed, some of the
hard parts to become fossils, but the soft parts to de-
compose and scatter far and wide. That, most men
think, is the real source of the Oil Family, the part of
it found in the Earth.

All of them from life !

206 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

HOW OLD ARE THE ROCKS?

If Oil and Gas come from life then they are most
abundant in rocks that were deposited after life had
developed abundantly.

Oil and Gas do occur in pockets but not in abundance
in the rocks laid at the beginning of Page Two. Some-
times where these rocks lie beneath the soil a boy or a
farmer will find little iridescent streaks of oil flowing
out with water from a spring, and he may think, "I
have found oil." But, as I said, in these earlier sea-laid
rocks oil is in disconnected pockets only. And, to be of
use, large reservoirs are needed, not just pockets of it.

But later on Page Two, you remember, the living
things began to spread, and plants increased, even sea-
weeds, just before the great development of fishes. It is
in the rocks laid at that time that we begin to find oil
and gas in any quantity, and more of them in rocks laid
when the fishes multiplied, and abundance of them in
many rocks that came later.

COVER NEEDED

Pour oil on water. It floats on top of the water ! Look
at a canal if you live near one. The oil from the boats
spreads over the top of the water. Try some in a glass
of water. Oil, then, is lighter than water.

And gas is even lighter still. Not only does it float
on water. It floats on air, and scatters far and wide. We
say it disperses.

What happens when you open a ginger ale bottle?
The gas within froths to the top and scatters. It was
put there under pressure and the top fastened on secur-
ely. Gas, 4 natural gas', is lighter than air. It has been
down in those rocks for millions of years. If there were

OIL AND GAS 207

cracks or crannies it would have dispersed long ago.
The rocks containing the gas there, must have been cov-
ered to keep it in.

And oil?

A pail of water stands on the floor. The bottom of
a curtain trails into it When you go back to pick up
the pail the water has crept up the curtain. If you are
away a long time, leaving the curtain trailing in the wa-
ter, you will find the pail empty and the curtain dry.
What happens? The water creeps up the curtain and
evaporates or is taken into the air. "Dries up," we say.

And that is exactly what happens to the oil if there
is a way out for it. It creeps up and up the tiny spaces
in porous rocks and passes off. Little by little it goes.
And, remember, some of this oil was made millions of
years ago. There has been a long time for it to creep
up, little by little.

And so oil-bearing rocks must be covered.

WHAT MAKES A COVER?

Thick solid formations of limestone will form a cover
over the porous oil-bearing rocks. But better still, an
excellent cover is a thick bed of shale. Shale is very
fine, and has few cracks. There are few or no pores for
the oil to creep through.

So the porous oil-bearing sediments must be sealed
over by an impervious bed, that is, one which cannot be
penetrated by the oil.

So far so good! The porous oil-bearing beds are
sealed. The oils and gas cannot get out.

BURIED RIDGES

The best place to find large reservoirs of oil is on
the sides of buried ridges. You must have the oil-bear-

208 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

ing rocks and the capping rocks just the same. Now
think of those rocks lying sloping up the sides of a bur-
ied ridge.

Oil is lighter than water so it will float up the slope
ibove the water. Gas is lighter than oil. So it will float
up above the oil.

Why must the ridge be buried? Because if uncovered
the oil and gas will escape out from the edges.

I said the best place to find oil and gas is along a
buried ridge and buried ridges are the best. But both
are found in more or less flat-lying basins. So much of
the world's oil and gas have been taken from the bur-
ied ridges that the large oil companies are now explor-
ing in the flatter basins.

But you can see for yourself that the oil won't run
together in a reservoir so well in a flat area as in a
sloping one.

AN OIL FIELD

When it is suspected that an area holds oil, test wells
are drilled. When an oil field is assured, roads are built,
a water supply secured, and then the drilling starts.

Some of you, I know, live in an oil country and know
the derricks that dot the land. There are several types
of machines used. First the hole must be drilled down
to the beds bearing the oil. The drill is driven down and
down. The bit at the end of the drill chews up the rock.
Water often comes into the hole through the cracks at
the sides. When enough rock has been crushed fine the
bailer is put down to take it up. As the material, the
chewed-up rock and water, comes up it is examined to
see what rock is being drilled through, limestone, shale
or sandstone, or any other type or combination. Notes

OIL AND GAS 209

are kept, and some of the drillings. For often there are
tiny microscopic fossils in them. If the geologist (for
practically all oil companies have geologists now)
learns the order in which the beds lie on top of one an-
other, or how many beds the drill has passed through
before oil is reached he can tell better how many feet
in depth it will be necessary to drill for the next well
in the field. So he or the driller keeps a careful account
a 'log'.

Suddenly the bailer line is slackened. Something is
pushing it up ! The cover has been pierced through to
the gas and oil-bearing rock.

Maybe it is a gusher ! Hold on to those tools ! It may
shoot them up. Careful does it! The top is off the great
ginger ale bottle !

WHAT MAKES IT POP ?

Gas and oil, you know now, are lighter than water.
Perhaps the water is pressing up from below.

"But, water," you say, "hurries down, not up." It
does.

Around the circumference of almost every oil field is
water, a catchment basin of rain water. It may be that
the ground water of the region is higher than the water
below the oil and that it has access to it. This water is
pressing hard to get down. All its weight presses down.
It rs stopped by the water beneath the oil. And the
water beneath the oil presses upward against the oil
with all the force with which it is pressed by the sur-
rounding water. The drill has pierced the covering rock.
The gas and oil have an outlet and up they come, driven
by the pressure of the water beneath, which in its turn

210 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

is driven by the weight of the water from the surround-
ing slopes far and near.

GAS AT WORK

There is another reason, for the spouting of the gas
and oil.

When the 'lid is on' over the oil and gas, the gas is
dissolved in the oil under pressure, just like the gas in
the ginger ale bottle. If there is more gas than the oil
will dissolve it remains free gas at the top. When the
hole is drilled and the gas released, up it spouts, first
the free gas, if any, then the gas and oil.

Danger Ahead!

But there are dangers! Let it alone! Up it comes!
The oil mixed with gas is more fluid. If allowed to flow
according to its own sweet will, the gas from the oil
far below will work its way to the top and leave the
oil behind to take care of itself. The oil alone is heavy
and slow. It will not flow easily. It sticks between the
sand grains or whatever pores it is in. It is lost!

So, do not let it flow too freely. Keep some gas with
the oil.

Rumours and More Rumours

So sometimes you hear that the oil companies or
governments are holding back or cutting oil production.
The oil companies will do anything within the law, to
make more money. But that is not always the reason.
The big operators and governments have learned that a
controlled flow will bring up more oil in the long run.

Crude Oil

'Crude oil' is what we call unrefined oil. You know it,
dark and greasy and usually fairly thick. That crude oil

OIL AND GAS 211

is made up of a number of things, the heavier elements
dissolved in the lighter.

There are two main types of oil. Some have a paraf-
fin base and some have an asphalt base. You know
what paraffin is. Think of the top of your mother's
jelly glasses, or of a candle. You know what asphalt is.
Think of an asphalt pavement, or the pot that boils
and smokes on the street when the man mends your
roof.

Hold up a glass of crude oil. What is it?

Do you live near a lake or the sea ? Watch two waves
rolling by. You can see two crests and the trough be-
tween. But can you tell just where in the trough one
wave ends and the other begins? So with the mixture of
oil and oil.

'CRACK' IT!

The oil has to be separated. Remember the heavy oil
is dissolved in the lighter. Not easy to separate !

It is bracked'. It all has to do with molecules and
atoms and such things mysterious things about which
you will learn later. The molecule of oil is made up of
a group of elements, just as water is made up of hydro-
gen and oxygen. When the crude oil is heated under
pressure the molecules will crack apart and re-sort
themselves, so you can get oils of paraffin base and oils
of an asphalt base and separate them. Some of the
gases also will come out.

REFINING OIL

There are various ways of refining the oil. The old
way was to heat a great 'shell* and draw off the vap-
ours at the top. The vapours were cooled and the lighter
oil which was in the vapour condensed. But not now.

212 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

We want many kinds of oil and gas. Aeroplanes need
lighter 'gases' than motor cars, and both oils are much
lighter than the oil you burn in your furnace or than is
burned by the Diesel engine, or by the engines of the
great ships at sea.

So the present refiners are very complicated. Far too
complicated to tell about here.

But there is a general plan. All the oil is heated until
it becomes vapour, and heated by the Cinderella 'gas'.
Now, some oils cool to liquid from vapour at one tem-
perature, other oils at a higher temperature. You know
that. To melt asphalt requires quite a lot of heat. But
melt some paraffin for your mother's jelly glass. It
melts with just the slightest heat. So by heating into a
vapour and cooling again at several temperatures it is
possible gradually to gather together in one stream all
the vapour oil that becomes liquid at a very high tem-
perature. As the vapour becomes still cooler another
oil will become liquid, and so on.

HISTORY OF THE USE OF OIL

The use of oil is older than written history.

Asphalt was used by men long, long ago. It was call-
ed by different names down through the ages. Now,
even, we call it pitch, tar, bitumen or asphalt. Gas seep-
ages lighted by accident such as lightning were worship-
ped by some.

Read in your Bible about Abraham who came from
Ur of the Chaldees. They were using asphalt as mortar
for bricks there. In building the tower of Babel 'slime'
had they for mortar, and the 'slime' was asphalt. It
was used in Nineveh. Search the Scriptures to see how
Nebuchadnezzar used bricks and bitumen. All these

OIL AND GAS 213

people lived near Mesopotamia or Irak, still one of
the great oil sources of the world a scene of struggle
in both Great War One and Great War Two. Both Ger-
many and the United Nations wanted that supply.

Herodotus, about 450 B.C. tells about oil from pits
in Persia.

WHERE?

Asia

Asia has many oil and asphalt fields. Irak has already
been mentioned. In the Sinai Peninsula Moses after he
fled from Egypt tended the flocks of Jethro and the
"angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of
fire out of the midst of a bush, and he looked, and
behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not
consumed." It was a gas seepage.

On the island of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf and
around its shores oil is found. In Burma there is oil
"on the way to Mandalay".

One of thq great oil fields of the world is in the
Dutch East Indies. The Japanese grabbed those oil
fields in the first wild onslaught of World War Two.
There is oil for the lamps of China.

Europe

The oil fields of Baku in southern Russia near the
Caucasian Mountains have appeared in history down
the centuries and were again the object of a great cam-
paign in World War Two. Every boy and girl knows
or ought to know of the battle of Stalingrad. Why
were the Germans so determined to break through?
Why were the Russians even more determined that they
should not? The oil wells and asphalt deposits of the

214 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Caucasians and particularly at Baku on the Caspian
Sea this was the goal.

The Magi or three Wise Men who came to Bethle-
hem were Fire-worshippers. They came from the east,
from Persia, the centre of Fire-worshippers and astrol-
ogers, those who think they can foretell life by the
stars. And the principal temple of the Fire-wor-
shippers was near Baku where a fire, a gas seep-
age, forever burned. It was a place of pilgrim-
age. It still is a place of pilgrimage, not now by
Fire-worshippers but by oil worshippers. It still is
one of the world's great sources of supply.

Oil and asphalt is found in other places around the
Caspian Sea. Russia is the world's second largest pro-
ducer of oil. When it is all explored it may become the
first.

Over in Rumania, too, are the same rocks as those
around the Caspian Sea, all deposited by a sea that ex-
tended far inland over Europe. And in Rumania, too,
those rocks have oil. In World War Two as in World
War One these oil fields were the desire of Germany.

Africa

Little is known of the oil of Africa. Most of Af-
rica has not been explored for oil. Egypt we know for
centuries used oil and asphalt but probably got it from
the Sinai Peninsula and the Dead Sea in Palestine.

South America

One day in March I stood at the bow of a large boat
on the Pacific Ocean as we slowly drew in to the most
westerly point of the mainland of South America. It
was Talara in Peru. The top of the cliffs on shore were

OIL AND GAS 215

studded with derricks. And believe it or not! The
ocean was studded with them too ! Out from the shore !
For the oil-bearing rocks extended out under the sea.
Talara is in Peru. And Peru was one of the first oil-
producing countries of the Western World.

Colombia, Venezuela and Trinidad are also oil pro-
ducers.

Trinidad is known all over the world for its Pitch
Lake, an asphalt lake. I have walked across it, and
watched the men dig a hole in the pitch, throwing it
into little dumping cars like those used down in the gold
mines. The little cars go rattling down to the wharf
where the pitch is unloaded onto ships and carried
north to make many a pavement in the United States,
Canada, England and other parts of the world.

The holes dug by the men are about two or three
feet deep. As the workers move across the surface of
the lake the holes behind them slowly fill. Inch by inch
the asphalt flows in from the sides, and in places the
pitch oozes up from below. To walk across it is like
walking on an asphalt pavement softened by the sun.

The lake is really very small. We would probably
call it a large pond if it were water.

Canada

Canada has a few oil fields. Western Ontario has
produced oil and gas slowly but steadily for many
years. The Turner Valley fields in the foothills of Al-
berta have produced considerable oil, and quantities of
gas, much of which has been wasted.

You have all heard of the Canol Oil project, where
oil from Fort Norman on the Mackenzie River has

216 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

been piped in and out the mountains and over the passes
up to Alaska.

The tar sands of Alberta hold a considerable quan-
tity of oil, but it is so costly to extract the oil from the
sand that this source has proved disappointing at pres-
ent.

Mexico

Before Cortez "stood on a peak in Darien" asphalt
and oil were found in Mexico and used by the Aztec
Indians. Mexico has written a new chapter in the his-
tory of oil. The Mexican Government took over the oil
fields and all the foreign companies from the United
States and Great Britain had to move out.

United States

The United States is the leading oil-producing coun-
try in the world. It must look to its laurels though, when
Russia gets in full swing.

Like the colonization of the country the discovery of
oil moved westward. First it was discovered along the
Appalachian Mountains. Then it was found in Pennsyl-
vania, Colorado, Wyoming, California, and so on. In
twenty States there are important oil fields, besides
some smaller ones in other States. The State of Texas
is the greatest oil field in the world, to date.

CONCLUSION

Shut your eyes and think of those oil derricks stalk-
ing across the land !

Then think of Russia, Irak and all the other places.
Think of all the oil in the world that is being drawn up
from the Earth!

The Earth a Treasure House ! Surely !

CHAPTER V

GOAL

SUNDAY MORNING, bright sunshine, sleigh bells, three
bright-faced children behind warm furry rugs with their
father and mother. Snow piled high on either side of
the road! Have you ever driven thus? Clear crisp air
against your cheeks, and brilliant sunshine overhead,
and over fences, and field on field deep in snow ! Shad-
ows of the pine trees and fence posts blocked in deep
blue !

The sleigh turns in a gateway flanked by piles of
snow. The dog rushes out to welcome them. Children
and dog chase one another and tumble in the clean white
snow.

It is cold, well below zero, cold but beautiful !

Then the family goes in. Standing quietly in a corner

217

218 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

of the living-room is a stove. Its heat embraces them like
the welcome of a friend. Its glowing eyes invite them.
It burns on steadily day and night, for this is a coal
stove. In the front above the bed of coals is a door, and
in the door are set pieces of mica through which the
glowing coals look out cheerfully.

Coal stoves are still used in parts of the country
where furnaces have not invaded and where wood is
scarce.

If you have not been fortunate enough to be welcom-
ed by a glowing coal stove, you have stood on a station
platform and watched a great monster of an engine ap-
proach. You are thrilled with the thought that it is
bringing someone to you, or perhaps is going to carry
you away, away, somewhere ! But just take time to look
at the big black car behind the engine, filled with coal.
This coal is not primarily for heat, though it produces
heat. The heat is for power. The coal heats the engine
boiler. The water in the boiler becomes steam. The
steam expands and pushes the pistons and there she
goes!

THE HYDROCARBON FAMILY AGAIN

Coal is another member of the Hydrocarbon Family
or Tribe. It is carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen
that is, when it is pure coal. And it never is. But that
is the basis of it. It is again that mysterious uniting of
atoms into molecules of which you will learn something
in chemistry.

You remember when reading of Oil and Gas that
hydrocarbons had their origin in life. And there you are
again. Coal was living vegetation.

But, sad to say, coal is not all coal.

COAL 219

Ash

After you have burned your fire you must clear away
the ashes even if it is only a little grate fire. What is
the ash?

In plants there are minerals that will not burn. Plants
take up iron and potash and other things from the soil.
You poke a white tablet into the pot of a weak plant to
make it grow. It contains some mineral parts. And the
plant just gobbles them up and grows strong. Many of
these minerals will not burn, and sulphur in various
forms is one of the most difficult impurities.

But probably most of the ash is carried in by water
or blown in by wind when the coal was being formed.
Ash material may even be blown into the coal after it
is mined if it stands waiting to be delivered to you.
Water

You can easily see how water could be in the coal.
It grew in moist places, and any amount might seep in
through the ages.

But water does not make ash ! No, but it has to be
driven out, and some of the heat is used to drive out
the water, which is not so good! It is poor coal that
has much water.

Gas

Do you live in the northern States or in Canada? If
you do you probably know the irritating ways of a coal
furnace.

"Open up the damper, the gas is filling the house !""
calls someone, just when you are in the middle of a
most interesting book, or ready to fall asleep at night.
The gas has escaped without burning, and instead of
going up the chimney and dispersing in the upper air,,

220 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

it has come through the furnace door and the open
damper and is seeping through the house. And that gas
is poisonous. Fortunately, there is an evil-smelling sul-
phurous gas with it. It is well it is evil-smelling. The
danger can be detected.

If you do not live where coal furnaces are used you
know the gas from the engine of a train. It is the same
coal gas.

And then you remember the lighting and cooking gas,
'artificial' gas, so-called. It, too, was taken from coal.

Thereby Hangs a Tail

"The tail may wag the dog." The part that was un-
important, the waste, a mere by-product, is becoming
most important.

Something like that is happening to the making of
gas from coal, when the gas is taken out and coke is
left. The gas is used and the coke is used. The coke can
still be burned for heat or cooking. It burns up faster
than anthracite coal but it is very good.

The coke and gas are the dog, in the process of mak-
ing gas. But there is a gummy stuff left, sticky, ugly,
dark that is the tail. The dog was the thing! The tail
was no particular use just waste ! But it is no longer
so. For in that gum were many precious things. Chem-
ists treated it this way and that. They cooked it, boiled
it, put this into it, took that out of it. Now it is known
to be the source of hundreds of valuable things, ben-
zene for instance, aspirin, plastics. See if you can find
twenty things made from coal-tar, for that is what the
'tail' is called. Perhaps the tail does not quite wag the
dog. But all these things are used far and wide, even in
places where coal is not needed for heat.

COAL 221

There is another curious fact. It really is not a part
of the doings of coal, but is connected. Bran oil is now
made from oat husks, corn cobs, wood pulp and other
waste from all sorts of grains things that were just
thrown away, cluttering waste ! From the bran oil can
be made many of the same products as from coal-tar.
Perhaps not so surprising when you come to think of
it! Both are from vegetable life, even though coal is so
very much older. Bran oil is not yet developed to any
great degree, but watch it!

The Hydrocarbons are a very closely related Family,
are they not?

What is this coal? How does it work such common
everyday miracles? So used to it are we that we forget
the wonder of it.

If you drive through French Canada at every farm
you see great piles of wood, cord wood, four feet wide,
four feet high, and yards and yards long, like a thick
fence, or wall. It was cut last winter, dried out all sum-
mer, and will be used for heating and cooking all next
winter.

Coal was once wood.

How do we know? Because wood and leaves are
found with it. Some are preserved right in the coal it-
self. The little cells of the wood can be seen under the
microscope. Beautifully preserved leaves, bark, and
wood are found in the beds below it, the mud beds in
which the plants grew, and in the beds above which
finally covered the swamp. And in the coal beds them-
selves, in places, are 'coal balls', round hard lumps

222 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

which when opened have preserved within them the
most fragile leaves. What made the 'coal balls' ? Some
of the mineral matter in the water fell on the leaves be-
fore they were destroyed. Once started the mineral mat-
ter slowly surrounded the leaves and preserved them
from whatever happened afterwards. 'Coal balls* do
not occur everywhere but there are enough to tell their
story.

This, then, is one way we can prove coal was wood.

Then, coal must have lived once. It did. But how did
it become coal ?

THE STORY OF ONE LITTLE LAKE

It was born long ago, in New York State, or in On-
tario, or, in truth, anywhere across the northern part of
the continent. I do not know exactly where. There was
no United States or Canada. It was just a continent
without a name, and without a human being.

The glaciers had melted far to the north, and the
nameless continent that is now North America was
slowly rising, throwing from its back the great wastes
of melted ice water. First a few islands appeared in the
watery expanse. There is one worth watching! Higher
and higher rises the island. More water comes in from
the north and along the channels of the Great Lakes. It
pushes back the sea-water and itself flows on to the sea,
as the continent rises !

In time our island becomes a hill which stands high
and dry. Now we can look at it. It is just rubble, glacial
till, dropped at the end of a melting glacier. And at its
feet stands a little lake, surrounded on all sides by
gently sloping land. And right across the front of the

COAL 223

lake across its path stands the hill. The water cannot
get out.

Let us look at it later, ten years later, twenty years
later, fifty years later or even one hundred years later.
Around its edges small plants have begun to grow. In
the water, warmer now, appear floating algae, a very
simple form of plant life. Over the country-side and on
our hill, bushes and then trees are beginning to appear.
Slowly the Earth is being re-clothed. The plants die and
some of them are carried into the lake by stormy autumn
winds. And the pollen from the trees, and some
branches are carried in. By this time water plants are
growing right in the water around the edges. Year after
year they live and die, their dead leaves and flowers fall
to the bottom, and mixed with them are the leaves and
pollen blown from the trees on the hill.

Slowly our lake is being filled up with muck from
the decaying vegetation. Each spring more water comes
down and plant life begins afresh. But the water cannot
flow away because the hill stands guard, right across
the path. Each autumn more leaves, more branches pile
in. Finally, scrubby bushes grow in a tangled swamp,
first at the edge, then right over the whole surface of
our little lake.

In time peat-moss, a greyish-green or whitish moss,
grows out beyond the former shores over the living
and dying mass. The trees, no longer on the hill only,
have come down to the swamp edge. They creep across
the erstwhile shore and year by year over the place
where our lake has been. And they, too, die and fall
Slowly, very slowly the lake disappears.

224 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Someone carelessly driving past just says, "A peat
bog."

There are many peat bogs, large and small, particu-
larly over the country where glacial debris stopped the
drainage,

Have you ever seen a farmer's claim on a peat bog?
It is a good place to study peat. I know a bog that the
neighbouring farmers have divided. Each has his own
share. It is in a very, very deserted lonesome-looking
country-side. I followed a waggon trail over a sand hill,
through some trees and down a slope. A wide, low coun-
try dark with scrub and small trees lay before me in
a hollow. Near at hand the larger bushes were cut back,
and a space irregularly cleared. A fringe of untouched
dark forbidding-looking bushes marked the edge of the
clearing. Farther down were reeds and soggy soil. Still
farther was stagnant water. I stepped off the trail and
the ground was 'springy', not wet, but like a mattress.
On either side of the trail and some feet below it was a
brown-black uneven floor. It could not be called a ditch
because it was wide, and it was dry, and had a more or
less even bottom. Back of the sunken floor was a wall
of peat bricks.

Each farmer cut his peat whenever he had time in
the summer, cut it into large bricks, and piled the bricks
along the edge of his 'cut' to sun-dry. The cuts might
be any depth, depending on the depth of the original
lake that was filled up. For this might have been our
little lake. Then in the autumn the farmer carried home
his peat.

Peat is very light and requires a great deal of stor-
age space. Where there are great quantities of it, it is

COAL 225

pressed into bricks or briquettes and used in that way.
You know now wherever and whenever you see it, peat
is made from decaying vegetation.

Old peat at the bottom, in general, will be dark, much
darker than the more recently made top layers. And
it will not always be pure. The spring freshets may
carry mud and sand into it. A forest fire may burn the
surrounding trees and fill it with ash. And then again
there is the mineral matter that the plants take up.

But where do the peat-bog plants get their minerals
when they grow, not in the soil, but on top of their
own plant-made muck? The dead plants contain min-
erals. The mineral matter may pass on and on from one
generation of plants to another. That is good for the
peat. The whole mass will not have so much unburnable
mineral matter in it.
Trees With Knees

There are other and larger swamps and bogs the
Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and Virginia and
others which lie along the low coastal plain between the
Appalachians and the sea.

There are forest swamps in the hot East Indies and
mangrove swamps form along the seashore in many
tropical countries. When the trees come down to the
shore near these great swamps, some of them turn their
roots into stilts, and each stilt has a knee. All around the
trees the roots spread out and down, knees at the turn
of each root. There stands the tree above the water.

AND COAL!

What has this to do with coal? Everything! This,
was the way coal was made and is being made. We now
get it from a coal mine.

226 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

A coal mine is very different from a gold mine. Yet
there are some things that are the same. There is a
shaft, the elevators, the miners, the galleries, the dig-
ging out from the walls, the shaky, dumpy little cars.

There are big mines and there are little mines. Down
the Mississippi valley you may drive along the road and
see a hole in the hillside, where a man or two has been
digging out. In some places the mines have been work-
ed out right under the sea. And there is every size be-
tween.

* * *

When was this coal mine, now far below the surface,
a lake or swamp on the surface ?

Look back at the end of Page Two of the Story
Written in Stone. Most of the continents then were
free from the sea, and on the continents were plants. In
many places were swamps not unlike the Dismal Swamp
of the South. From then until now coal has been
formed.

FROM WOOD TO COAL

But why is the wood preserved ? There are thousands
and thousands of square miles of wooded hills and val-
leys in the world, and they do not make coal.

When wood dies in the air it disintegrates falls
apart. Water and the oxygen in the air just slowly burn
it up. You do not see it burn. It takes so long. The gas
CO 2 (more chemistry!) passes into the air. CO 2 is more
about atoms and molecules. Two atoms of oxygen and
one of carbon just fly off together in the air. And be-
sides, water is formed that is H 2 O two atoms of
hydrogen and one of oxygen. They, too, take French
leave and calmly soak into the ground. And all the min-

COAL 227

eral matter just lies carelessly where it falls. So there
is nothing left of the coal, just the ash. The wood all
disintegrates, falls apart. But not all wood disinteg-
rates.

First, we have wood. It grows now and we burn some
of it. Then, we have peat. It grew long ago at least
the part of it that we burn. Then, we have brown coal
or lignite. It grew longer ago, on Page Four and Page
Three.

Brown Coal or Lignite

Brown coals are one stage. As it lies at the bottom
of the deposit some of the water is pressed out, and,
from the pressure of what lies on top of it there is a
little heat.

Since the brown coal has not advanced so far in the
process of becoming coal it follows that it has been
formed more recently. That is true in general. There
are a few coal deposits in the older rocks the coal of
which is still a bit brown but that means that they have
been but little disturbed.

But think again. Brown coals are younger. That is,
they were made after the land plants had evolved into
many kinds. They had seeds and pollen. They are made
of different plants.

Bituminous Coal

What is that? Look back at page 203. Artificial gas
is made from coal. Oil, too, can be distilled from coal.
Bituminous coal has much oil. Just get in the way of the
smoke of an engine. That dirty black smoke and the
smut on your face comes from bituminous coal. 'Soft'
coal, we call it sometimes. Your mother knows it, if she

228 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

hangs out some clean clothes when the wind is blowing
from a factory or from a large apartment house.

Look at a piece of wood with a magnifying lens. See
the tiny cells. You can see them in your hardwood floor
or in a piece of furniture. Those are the little tubes up
which the life-giving sap flowed, right to the very tip
of the trees and the leaves. When the trees die the
cells are empty, the sap oozes out or dries out.

Let us stand at the edge of one of those great swamps
of long ago. A great tree falls and sinks into the moist
muck. In that moist muck is the goo of past decay
which penetrates up and through those cells. The log is
slowly saturated. It lies there and is covered and many
things go on above it, continents rise and fall, mountains
are born and worn down. Still it lies buried.

Then along comes man and begins to dig out the
wood which is now coal. That log into which the de-
cayed matter has soaked is full of oil. It has made bit-
uminous coal.

That is how it happened.

Gannel Coal

It is cold and blustery outside. The trees are lashing
at one another with their naked branches. Snow or sleet
is falling in spurts.

But we are cosy here. Put another piece of coal on
the grate fire.

Yes, the chunks are large, but crack it this way with
the poker, along this edge. See, it breaks with smooth
and squared edges. The furnace coal does not break
in that way at all.

What a fine bright flame, roaring up the chimney!

Hear the tar in the coal sizzling! Put on the fire

COAL 229

screen. Sparks may spit out on the carpet. Well, that
soon drives away the blues of a wild autumn night!

What is this coal?

Cannel coal.

Away in the northern part of North America, in
northern Canada, are hundreds of lakes hidden here,
there, and everywhere between the hills of that Cana-
dian Shield. The hills, many of them, are covered with
conifers, trees that bear cones. You know them pine,
spruce, hemlock, Canada balsam. And among them are
many other flowering trees and mosses. And flowering
trees have pollen grains. Other plants have spores. At
certain times of the year the spores and the pollen
grains scatter with the wind, far and wide. They fall,
some of them and float as a thick scum on those hidden
lakes, and on some not so hidden.

The spores and pollen grains for protection are cov-
ered with a fatty substance. The fat makes oil.

And cannel coal was deposited in the older swamps
in stagnant water which has been covered by spores,
and in the later swamps by pollen grains, season after
season.

Anthracite Coal

Have you filled the furnace for the night? This coal
is different, small lumps and very hard.

What is the difference ?

It does not break and crackle. It has not much oil.
It does not flame. It is harder to start, but it burns with
a steady glow and it lasts a long time. It is 'hard coal'
anthracite coal.

What makes it different?

You can see, as I said, there is not much oil in it.

230 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Nor are there the sudden quick explosions of gas that
the cannel coal makes in the grate fire.

Why? They were all made from vegetation.

The oil and gas have escaped which means that each
shovelful has more pure carbon, because it has less of
oil and gas.

But how did the oil and gas escape ?

Perhaps the layers that lay above these coal beds
were porous, and the oil and gas seeped out. That is
the case in some places. But that will not account for all
the anthracite coal in the world.

The anthracite coal of North America is found in
Pennsylvania and in Alberta.

Do you notice something, common to both places?
Look at your map.

Pennsylvania is crossed by part of the Appalachian
Mountains, and that is where the anthracite coal is
found. The Rocky Mountains cross the west side of Al-
berta, and that is where the anthracite coal is found.

Does that mean anything?

Oh, yes. When those mountains were built up there
was heat and pressure. The rocks about the coal beds
were cracked, pushed and pulled, and so were some of
the coal beds. And through those cracks and fissures
escaped the oil and gas.

Peat may become brown coal, and some of it may be-
come bituminous coal, but some people who study it in
thin sections with the microscope do not think that
brown coal or bituminous coal will become anthracite,
even through the escape of oil and gas. Another possi-
bility is that anthracite is made chiefly of wood, tree
trunks.

COAL 231

WHERE DO WE FIND COAL?

Almost everybody knows that coal comes from Penn-
sylvania and from practically all the States around
Pennsylvania. We have mentioned the coal of Alberta.
Down the Mississippi valley there is coal in abundance
in Ohio, Illinois and Indiana. Most of the Mississippian
coal is soft, more bituminous than the Pennsvlvanian or
Albertan coal. There is much of that soft coal in Nova
Scotia. There is a cliff there, of the muddy grey rocks,
along the Joggins coast, and standing upright in it, are
hundreds of fossil tree trunks.
Europe

u Oh," says a man walking down the street, "why
bring coals to Newcastle?"

Newcastle in England is one of the great coal centres
of the world. Why bring coals to Newcastle? Why, in-
deed ! That, means the man, is absolutely unnecessary.
Newcastle has enough coal.

South Wales is another great coal centre. Welsh coal
is anthracite. It burns leaving little ash. I know, because
I have used both Pennsylvanian and Welsh coal in my
furnace.

Germany has the largest supply of coal in Europe, so
far as known. The word Westphalia' just makes you
think of coal. But there are other provinces of Germany
with coal.

Russia has coal, and when all is known there may be
more in Russia than in Germany.

Most of the other countries have small supplies, and
in some of the smaller countries of Europe what they
have has not all been developed.

232 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Asia

In Asia by far the greatest known resources are in
China, where there is abundant anthracite.

Siberia, a part of Russia you know, may have some.
As yet we do not know much about it.

There is some coal in India, but just how much we
do not know.

Most of the other countries of Asia have coal, but it
is mined in a very primitive wav.

Africa

There is coal in Africa, too. Most of it is in the
southern parts of the continent, and much of it is lig-
nite or bituminous coal.

But in that African coal is a plant, 'Glossopteris' it
is called such a name for a plant!

Over in South America 'Glossopteris' grew, too. The
specimens of the plant are poor, but that is what they
are, according to some of the people who study plants.

Well, how did the plant get across the Atlantic Ocean
to South America? The spores could not float all that
distance. How then did Glossopteris get there ?

The Atlantic Ocean is shallow, for an ocean, between
Africa and South America. Do you remember the moun-
tain range drowned in the Atlantic (see page 76) ?
Some men think that not only a mountain range but a
whole continent lies drowned under the South Atlantic
Ocean, that once this drowned continent stood above
the water, that the Glossopteris spores blew west and
then again west, hopping to the now drowned continent,
thence westward to South America. Then the continent
sank, but Glossopteris was safely across.

We will have to know more before we are sure. It

COAL 233

is rather a heavy responsibility for a plant with such a
name to suggest that there must have been a continent.

South America

There is some coal in Colombia, more in Peru, but
not so much in a few of the other countries, and none
in some of them.

Australasia

There is a considerable quantity of coal in Australia,
and some in Tasmania and New Zealand, but not so
much as in Canada and in the United States.

CHAPTER VI

IRON

Ah me! What perils do environ

The man that meddles with cold iron.

SAMUEL BUTLER

"HEY THERE, FRED, turn those cows," called Fred's
father. "And hammer a board over that hole in the
fence. We won't have a carrot left."

Fred stopped pitching his ball against the barn wall,
to chase the cows. It was milking time. The idling cows
nosing around had found the way out of bounds into
the garden.

Reluctantly Fred went into the workshop. His pocket
full of nails, hammer in hand, he attacked the hole in
the fence. As he hammered it suddenly popped into his
mind, "What is a nail? And, for that matter, what is
a hammer?"

234

IRON 235

Iron, both of them. Fred looked around, "How many
things can I see made of iron? the pump, the plough,
nails, hammer, nearly all tools, the wire fences around
the fields, screws, the lightning rod up the barn, the
hoe, the tractor." On and on he went.

Make a list of all the other things you can think of
that are made of iron.

Fred, of course, lived in the country, and perhaps
you live in the city. But that does not make any differ-
ence. And if you travel from the country to the city
don't forget the train in which you travel, nor the
tracks over which the train runs, nor the bus, the bridge
you came over on and on.

We have to breathe air. We have to drink water, and
we have to eat food just to live. But, I wonder, besides
these life necessities, if there is another thing in the
world we use more than iron, or the things made of
iron. I wonder!

WHAT IS IRON t

Irpn, too, like copper and tin is one of the treasures
of the Earth. And not only of our Earth but of other
stars as well. Pure iron is not very common. When it is
pure it forms a very bright crystal. It is brilliant silver-
white in colour and can take a very high polish. Also
it is magnetic, that is, it acts like a magnet. It, with
other things, easily forms a salt. There are several
kinds of iron salts. And they very readily change their
nature. Again the question of atoms and molecules
about which you will learn more in chemistry ! But you
know perfectly well without chemistry that iron rusts
that is one of the changes which means the atoms

236 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

re-adjust themselves. For some of those atoms unite
with the oxygen in the air.

Iron is generally found in rock and such rock is
called iron ore.

But did I hear you ask, "Does it occur in igneous
rocks or in sedimentary?' 1 The answer is it occurs in
both.

In Igneous Rock

Have you read of the Giants' Causeway in Ireland?
That is basalt, a kind of rock formed from volcanic ac-
tion. There is iron in it.

We get iron from other stars ! Really we do. Met-
eorites! Not all meteorites are made of iron. Some are
stone. But often they are made of one of the purest
forms of iron. Smooth, rounded masses of all shapes
and sizes, they land here literally out of the heavens.
Have you seen one? When you do you will have no
doubt whatever about its having been melted. A meteor-
ite is often irregularly pitted on the outside, hard and
heavy, but so smooth, not a sharp edge anywhere. It
came through the atmosphere of the Earth at such a
rate that the outside was melted, hardening again as
it cooled. It arrived here warm, but as hard as well,
as hard as iron, for that is what a great many of them
are iron with some nickel. You can see meteorites in
some museums. When cut through they display the
brilliant silver-white colour and are of ten. polished in
the showcases, revealing the long criss-cross crystals.
Very pure they look and very beautiful.

Meteorites large and small are found in many places
in the world. They, of course, have nothing whatever
to do with the country rock where they are found. They

IRON 237

may fall anywhere. There is supposed to be a very large
one buried deep in Arizona. It has made a great hole
in the Earth, at least that is what is believed. The great
hole is there and hundreds of little meteorites are all
over the place. But, if the big hole was made by an im-
mense meteorite the latter has never been found. It has
buried itself too deeply in the earth. Meteorites are not
a source of iron, commercially. They are generally too
small and too scattered. They are more of a curiosity.
But they show us a number of things : the iron crystals,
the fact that iron exists in almost a pure state and that
other stars have iron.

It is now thought that the centre of the Earth is iron,
or iron and nickel. Do you remember on Page One of
the 'Story in Stone', where all the men who had thoughts
about the birth of the Earth, differed in many ways but
they all agreed on one thing that whenever the whole
Earth or parts of it were molten, the heavy parts sank
down towards the centre ?

And then there are those earthquake people. They
have found out things about the Earth, too. They find
that the vibrations from an earthquake travel fast and
faster through about the first 600 miles or so of the
Earth. For another 1,200 miles or thereabouts, they
go faster more slowly, that is, the increase of speed is
not so great. Then through about 4,000 miles at the
core of the Earth, the increase is very great again,
much greater than through the first 600 miles.

Up here on the surface of the Earth, in a smelter
furnace where iron is separated from the ore, a great
mass of the smelted ore is poured into containers and
it sorts itself: the heavy metal sinks to the bottom; the

238 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

other mixture sulphides and oxides they call them
lie on top of the metal (they are lighter in weight) and
above that is the frothy slag I

Now all these things point one way. It cannot be
proved yet. Some other facts may come to light. But as
it stands men have changed their thoughts about the
centre of the Earth, each man mounting on a step built
by one before, just as they did when thinking of the
birth of the Earth.

Long ago it was thought the Earth was full of molt-
en matter. It was warmer down a deep mine, geysers
vomit up hot water, and volcanoes pour out lava. Who
would not think the centre was molten !

But in the meantime all these other things have been
discovered. Now it is thought that the core of the Earth,
about that central 4,000 miles, is mainly iron and nickel,
that the next 1,200 miles or so, is something of the na-
ture of the sulphides and oxides, and the last 600 miles
on the outside is rock, heavier in the lower part, and
just slag-like on the outer crust.

So, iron is found in igneous rocks.

In Sedimentary Rock

And then, is iron 'found in sedimentary rock ? Have
you ever taken water out of a pump that has not been
used for some time? It is not good. It tastes of iron
from the long pipe in which the water has been stand-
ing. Iron dissolves fairly readily in water. It is not the
iron that will hurt you in the water standing in the pump
pipe. It is other things. There is often iron in drinking
water.

And we have iron in our blood. If we do not have
enough of it we become pale and weak, and to get more

IRON 239

iron we eat liver or something disagreeable that the
doctor gives us.

So you see, iron is readily dissolved. You can see
why when you remember that it is usually in the form of
a salt.

But all these sources of iron : water as you take it in
a pail, plants or even the soil where the plants get it
all these sources are not enough. The quantities are
small.

But if iron can dissolve in water, given time water
can re-deposit it. And it does. It is doing it now and it
has done it since the beginning of time, or of water. So
you see iron can be in sedimentary rock.

When I was out making a map of the rocks in a cer-
tain district an old farmer with a gleam in his eye said
to me, "Did you see that hill over there behind the
bush? A fortune-teller told me, that hill is my fortune.
There is oil in it."

Now I knew that the rocks underlying his farm were
lying directly upon the ancient rocks of the Canadian
Shield, that there had been little life when they were
laid down, that nowhere in the world has oil been found
in rocks so old.

That gleam in his eye meant "Don't you dare tell
me there isn't oil there !" So I went carefully, very care-
fully.

"Is there a swamp on one side of your hill?" I asked,
innocently.

"Why, yes!" he answered, surprised that I knew
without having been there. But you see I knew the
whole wide country was full of those glacial boulder
hills with large and small rocks piled higgledy-piggledy

240 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

together, and most of those hills were stopping the
drainage and forming bogs.

"Is the oil on the water ?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

You know how oil floats on water making an irides-
cent pattern of many colours when seen in the right
light.

"Next time you see it," I added, "poke your finger
into the surface. If it is oil it will flow together when
you take your finger out. But if it is another thing, iron*
oxide, it will leave cracks radiating from your finger
point"

For there is iron in bogs, and swamps. If enough is
present it falls to the bottom mixed with carbon and
other minerals, forming a soft iron called 'limonite'.
The word 'limonite' comes from a Greek word 'leimon',
meaning a meadow or marsh.

And in some of these marshes there are certain or-
ganisms which act upon the impure limonite and form
a soft bog-iron. The yellow ochre you see in your Art
class is limonite and clay.

In some places in bogs it gathers together in concre-
tions forming hard heavy stones of iron in a form called
'marcasite'. Break them open and within are crystals
radiating out from the centre, a very beautiful form.

So, iron is being deposited now.

And it has been deposited through the millions of
years in the past. When it is all added up, you see that
iron might occur in rock of any age.

Look back to the story of Page One. The rocks laid
in the inland sea have left vast stores of iron in Minne-
sota, Wisconsin and Michigan. In Europe much of the

IRON 241

iron is in rocks that belong to Page Three of the Great
Composition of the Story of the Earth.

NATIVE IRON

Iron is found in many forms, sometimes in shapeless
masses, sometimes in crystal form.

Limonite

I have told of limonite and bog-iron and marcasite.
Now if limonite is heated somewhat and the water driv-
en out it may become hematite.

Hematite

There on the table are three lots of hematite. They
do not look very much alike, do they?

This first one is massive, almost black, and darkly
shiny. Take it up if you can lift it. Very heavy, isn't it?
Scratch it with your knife edge. The scratch is red
blood-red.

Now try this piece. It is a conglomeration of roundish
bumps, reddish-bronze in colour. Break off a lump. It
is crystallized. Scratch it. Again the scratch is red.
Blood-red !

That third piece, over there, is blood-red anyway.
You do not need to scratch it. If this last piece of red
hematite came from Lake Superior, and perhaps it did,
the Indians knew about it. You see, it is softer than the
others. The Indians used it for their war paint.

All this hematite probably was limonite once. Some-
how it was heated, at some time. That is not surprising
around Lake Superior. For on Page One, remember,
there were lofty mountains here and that means volca-
noes and molten rock welling up from below. In the

242 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

heating, the limonite lost the water that might have
helped it to crystallize. So here it is a dull red mass.

Dark or red, in this form or in that, it all makes a
red scratch, blood-red. And that is where it got its
name, from a Greek word 'haima' meaning blood.

Hematite is one of the greatest sources of iron. In
the United States, something like 90% of the iron min-
ed is hematite.

Magnetite

I know a lake up north on the Canadian Shield
which has a great patch of black or almost black sand.
Most of the sand of the region is a reddish, sand col-
our. Round the Great Lakes the sand is grey. But this
is almost black. When I scooped some up in my hand it
was heavy, most surprisingly heavy.

These black sands or at least the black in them came
from rock containing magnetite, another iron ore, black
this time.

Have you a magnet? It is almost the same word, isn't
it? Put some needles or iron filings on your table and
hold the magnet in your hand beneath the table, touch-
ing the wood. Watch the needles follow the magnet.

Well, magnetite is magnetic. It has that same force.

Once, long ago, a shepherd was wandering with his
sheep on Mount Ida, on the island of Crete, south of
Greece. (Look at your map).

In his hand the shepherd had an iron-pointed staff,
so the story goes. Somewhere on the mountain-side were
those same black sands that I saw in that northern lake.
When the shepherd, walking along, put his staff in the
sand he noticed that all the very black grains stuck to

IRON 243

the iron point. He could rub them off. But he could pick
them up again, by the end of his staff.

The shepherd's name was Magnes!

So came the words 'magnet', 'magnetism' and 'mag-
netite'. For it was magnetite sand that stuck to the iron
point. That is one legend.

Have you a compass? It always points north. But
not to the North Pole. It points to the Magnetic Pole,
some distance southwest of the North Pole.

Pyrite

Come with me across the field. There is a man there
who thinks he has gold. Has he ? Let us look.

The rock beneath this farm is limestone. You see we
are walking over it here. It is almost flat and cannot
change much in the length of this field. You remember
gold comes from rock that has been melted. If there
had been melted rock so near this limestone there would
have been some disturbance. The limestone would not
be so calmly flat.

Let us see. A broad white vein cuts through the lime-
stone, without twisting it, or cooking its edges. Is it
quartz? Gold often occurs in quartz. But if melted
quartz cut through limestone like that, the rock on its
edges would have been cooked. And this is just as it
was.

There is another test. Scratch it with your knife. (A
knife is so handy!) The white rock shows a white
scratch. It is soft. Quartz is harder, much harder. You
cannot scratch it so. This is crystalline calcium carbon-
ate, that is, just crystalline limestone.

"But," insists the man, "there is gold in it. See

244 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

there!" and he points to some bright shining gold-
coloured cubes. They look exciting, and he is excited.

But hand me that bottle of acid, hydrochloric acid.
We will try it out.

See, the acid just eats it up.

That is iron pyrite Fool's gold ! and it has fooled
many a man.

How did it get there ?

Water percolated through that crack in the limestone
carrying in both dissolved limestone and dissolved iron
and sulphur (for iron pyrite is iron and sulphur). The
iron and the sulphur united in that strange way minerals
have. And as the water slowly evaporated it deposited
the limestone in a crystalline form, bit by bit, and de-
posited with it the cubic crystal of pyrite.

Pyrite also occurs in quantities in igneous rocks and
in metamorphic rock (you remember that word; look
at page 13) . When in such rocks it usually means those
rocks have been very highly heated.

Pyrite or pyrites, as it is called, can be seen in many
rocks. It rusts easily, when exposed. Common as it is,
it is not good for mining iron because it is difficult to
separate the sulphur from the iron.

MAN-MADE IRON

If iron occurs in igneous rocks and in sedimentary
rocks and if it can occur in sedimentary rocks down
through all the ages, think what a lot of iron there is
on the Earth, not to mention what there may be at the
Earth's core. That is well, since we use it so much.

Look at the list you made of the ways in which we
use it.

IRON 245

All those made irons are not the same, are they?
There is wrought iron, cast iron and far and away above

all there is steel.

I

Wrought Iron

Let us go back to Persia, or somewhere there on the
Eastern Mediterranean. The Cave-man we saw on Pae^e
Four is dead. In fact, probably many of his great-grand-
children are dead. This is another man, still a savage,
but he can make a fire.

He has had a meal. I don't know which one because
I am sure he did not have three a day, every day, as
we do. But his fire is out now. All about him is deso-
lation. He has come back to one of his hunting-grounds.
The forest where he caught his game has been burnt to
a cinder. Perhaps it was from the fire of another sav-
age, perhaps it was struck by lightning. When he made
his own fire he laid down a stone tool. Now he wants to
find it. He pokes around in the ashes with a piece of
hard stick. The very ground all around is still warm
from the forest fire. One stone he pushes out of his way
still has a red glow. He pokes it. The end of his stick
smoulders. But here is a very strange thing! The end of
the stick has left a hole in the stone. The red glow is
dying and his stick leaves less and less impression as he
curiously pokes the stone. Farther on he finds another
and another stone still warm. The glow dies before long
on them all. When cool he wonderingly turns some of
the stones. He learns that this particular kind of stone
is heavy, very heavy. He pounds it and finds he can
change its shape.

Some men think it was in some such way that men

246 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

learned that these stones, which had iron in them, coula
be hammered into different shapes.

Or, it has been suggested, some worker in copper
long ago tried what he could db with iron, and found
it, too, could be heated and softened and then hammer-
ed into shape.

Whether the use of iron was discovered in this way
or in that, certainly men learned that an arrowhead of
iron was sharper and altogether better than one of
stone. So they made iron arrowheads.

The first iron stones men found and worked were
probably meteorites. When the white man explored
North America he found the Eskimos of Greenland
were hammering out crude weapons from pieces of met-
eorites and so were some of the Indians on the west
coast, hammering them cold, with other pieces of stone.
They worked away a long, long time to get a piece free
from the main meteorite. But time was nothing to them.
They had not learned the use of heat in softening them.

Many of the men who study about early man think
the Iron Age, that is, when men began to use iron tools
instead of stone, came after the Bronze Age, even
though bronze was more difficult to make. Others are
not so sure. It really is possible that in some places
where there was iron and not copper men learned to use
iron. In Africa, for instance, there was no Bronze Age.
The Iron Age followed the Stone Age.

Or, on the other hand, where there was copper and
not iron they learned to use copper.

The very first known record we have in the world is
in the Bible, Genesis IV, verse 22 : "Tubalcain, the for-
ger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron." Just

IRON 247

how many thousands of years B.C. that was we do not
know. But the man who first wrote that thought it w r as
pretty near the beginning of human life.

You remember the old tin pail is iron covered with
a thin coating of tin. Iron, then, can be pulled out, and
made into any shape you want. It is rolled into sheets
to make the tin pail.

Let us visit a blacksmith's shop. We must go to the
country. There are a few left there. Farmers' horses
still have to be shod.

Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

The Village Blacksmith H. W. LONGFELLOW

That was written in New England. Every village had
its smithy, where now we have service stations.

Let us go to the door and watch him.

He turns the bellows on to his forge. It glows and
glows.

See, in the forge he has a long iron bar. It is black
at this end though hot to touch, but right in the fire it
is first red-hot and then white-hot. When its colour
shows it is heated enough to work the smith lifts it from
the forge to the anvil where with ringing blows, he ham-
mers it into the shape he wants. Sometimes he dips it
quickly into water.

The village smithy's main work now is making horse-
shoes but he used to make many other things, or mend
ploughs and pipes for pumps, and in large foundries

248 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

they made iron fences and gates, and many other things.

Such iron is malleable, that is, it can be shaped by
hammering or by a mallet. That is the origin of the
word. In other words, it can be 'worked'. It is called
'wrought iron'. 'Wrought' is an old word, the old form
of 'worked'.

In many places in Europe you can see beautifully
wrought-iron gates and doors, and railings. Indeed,
many things!

Cast Iron

One day, probably long after it was found that iron
could be hammered out, someone working away with
iron, heating it to hammer it, found that it melted down
so that it could be poured, or that sometimes it could be
poured. Some of it may have fallen on a hollow stone
or between stones or into a hollow in the clay, into
something that could hold it without catching fire. When
cooled the iron took the shape of the mould into which
it had fallen. The first cast iron !

Why was some of it easier to pour? The man who
first discovered that it could be poured into a shape did
not know why, but we do know. It had a great deal of
carbon in it. Iron readily takes up carbon, and possibly
some of the burning wood of the fire became mixed
with the iron. At any rate, iron with carbon can be
shaped by being poured into a mould but it cannot be
hammered into shape, hot or cold.

And so we use cast iron now for many things. But
the method of casting or pouring into moulds is used
even more for steel.

IRON 249

Steel

The form of iron which we use most is steel. When
the descendant of our savage friend in Persia or the
East accidently let his hot soft iron stone roll into a
near-by stream he heard it sizzle but he thought nothing
of it. Every time he dropped water on the hot stones
of his fire there was a sizzling and a spitting.

But once, perhaps, he pulled a piece out to hammer
it again. It was different. It was harder and broke at
his heavy pounding instead of taking the shape he
wanted.

Why? Because it had cooled suddenly. That was the
first man to make steel. Or, probably that was the way
it was first learned that iron cooled quickly was strong-
er and more brittle.

That process of heating and cooling quickly is called
tempering'. 'Finely tempered steeF ! It will take a finer
edge. It will not wear out so quickly. It will not only
make spearheads, but swords and knives on chariot
wheels. Later the swords of Damascus were famous
for their finely tempered steel.

Now all these things were learned somewhere east
of the Mediterranean. At least, that is what is thought.

Iron has been found in one of the pyramids of Egypt,
built at least as long ago as 3,000 B.C. Probably iron
was strange to the Egyptians. They used only a little of
it, and then only for sacred things, such as burial. At
any rate, when the Israelites left Egypt, wandered in
the wilderness and finally invaded Palestine they had no
weapons to match the Philistines, and the Canaanites,
armed with swords, and chariots with steel knives. Look
at your Bible again. Joshua XVII, verses 16 and 18:

250 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

u And the children of Joseph said, 'the hill is not enough
for us; and all the Canaanites that dwell in the land of
the valley have chariots of iron'."

And again, I Samuel XIII, verses 19 to 22: u Now
there was no smith found throughout all the land of
Israel . . . but all the Israelites went down to the
Philistines to sharpen every man his share (plough-
share) and his coulter and his axe and his mattock
... So it came to pass in the day of battle,
that there was neither sword nor spear found in
the hand of any of the people that were with Saul
and Jonathan. But with Saul and Jonathan his son was
there found."

This was all during the fourteenth or fifteenth cen-
tury B.C. or perhaps even earlier.

The use of iron and steel travelled slowly westward
into Europe. Homer mentions it among the Greeks
about 1,200 B.C. By the time it appeared in Europe
weapons were decorated often with fancy curves.

But steel as we now have it is prepared in many ways,
in many types of furnaces, and the iron united with
other minerals to give it different qualities. But still the
carbon content is the important part. It is not just chance
now. Carbon can be added.

For wrought iron very little carbon.

For cast iron, much carbon.

For steel, varying quantities. It must be malleable
at different temperatures for different types of steel.

Then, of course, there are other variations depend-
ing on the length of time in cooling and on the way in
which it is hammered, pressed or poured, or any other
method. For steel, too, is now poured.

IRON 251

Iron has the most varied characteristics: it is hard-
ened by sudden cooling, softened by slow cooling. We
make steel hammers so hard they can cut other softer
iron and steel. It may be brittle or drawn out into long
thin wire. It may be magnetic or non-magnetic. It has
many other contrasts.

WHERE IS THE IRON OF THE WORLD?
North America

In North America the largest supply is around Lake
Superior, in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. It is
hematite, and most of it comes from the Mesabi Range.

And remember the coal in the Mississippi valley,
principally in Illinois and Ohio ! That means cheap
smelting.

For more than fifty years this region has been the
chief source of iron. A great deal of iron has been
taken out during that fifty years and well, how long
will it last? Not for ever!

The next greatest supply is in the State of Alabama.
It is a lower-grade ore, but will probably be used more
and more as the Lake Superior supply gives out. The
Alabama iron, too, is hematite.

Then, several places in the western States have small
supplies of magnetite. There is a little in the north-
eastern States.

Canada, up to date, has not had enough for its own
use. But all the story is not told. North of Lake Super-
ior is a lake, Steeprock Lake, not very large compared
to Lake Superior, but not so small for a twisted turn-
ing lake. A few years ago great boulders of iron were
seen on the shores of one part. Search was made for

252 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

the rock from which the boulders came. Nowhere did
it show. It must be under the lake ! It is !

Now a dam has been built. The branch of the lake
beneath which lies the iron is being pumped out. Then
the iron will be mined. This is a very high-grade hem-
atite.

Up in Labrador explorers recently have found im-
mense quantities of hematite ore, high-grade ore too,
which bids fair to be one of the great supplies of the
world. But alas ! that too, is far from coal and cheap
smelting. But Canada with her iron and electrical pow-
er may yet develop a great iron industry.

There are many other small deposits of magnetite
iron, particularly in the Ontario part of the Canadian
Shield. They were mined years ago before the discov-
ery of the great Lake Superior supply.

There is a great deal of iron ore in Newfoundland.
It contains much phosphorus and requires a particular
type of smelting. Next to the United States, Newfound-
land now has the greatest output in North America.

Most of this iron of North America comes from the
rocks of Page One of the Earth's own story.
South America

There is some iron being mined in Chile, and Brazil
has large supplies. It is known there is some in Vene-
zuela and elsewhere, but there is still much exploratory
work to be done.
Europe

Britain has an abundant supply of iron ore, mostly
hematite, but not all of it is of good grade. And Brit-
ain has imported quite a bit of the ore for her steel
from the continent. But, you remember about 'bringing

IRON 253

coals to Newcastle'. Right near her iron deposits there
is a great supply of coal for cheap smelting. So that
Britain has built up a huge steel industry.

In the Ruhr valley on the continent lie great iron and
coal supplies, to build up the iron and steel industry of
Europe. And these supplies pay no attention to politi-
cal boundaries. Germany is in it. France is in it. Bel-
gium is in it and even little Luxembourg has her finger
in that pie. European wars have pivoted about the re-
gion. This great supply of ore is not of the highest
grade. It, too, contains much phosphorus.

Sweden has some of the highest-grade ore in Eu-
rope, of the magnetite type. But Sweden lacks coal for
cheap smelting. Sweden ships her ore to other countries,
chiefly to Germany.

Spain has had some iron ore, but most of it has al-
ready been mined. Austria also has small supplies.

Russia is the unknown quantity. Most of her known
iron is of a rather low grade.

Africa

Across North Africa in Algeria and Tunisia is quite
a lot of hematite iron. There may be still more in Mor-
occo. Look at your map. See the Atlas mountains. It
looks hopeful! But alasl There is no coal for smelting.
Most of it is shipped to England where it is smelted
and made into steel.

In South Africa near Pretoria is iron, and near it is
some coal. The quantity is not large enough nor pure
enough for more than local supply. Iron ores are found
at various places in other parts of Africa, but not much
is yet known of them, and they are not yet mined.

254 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Asia

Japan has one big supply, but it is poor ore. Japan
has the coal for smelting but most of her ore is import-
ed from other countries.

China has reserves but, except for one field of mag-
netite on the Yangtze river, it is a poor grade. Very
little of it has been worked.

India has the greatest supply in Asia, some of it high-
grade hematite. But Indian coal is not very good. The
Indian ore has not been greatly developed.

Australasia

Australia has enough for her own use but little to
export to other countries.

Of the islands the Dutch East Indies has large sup-
plies and there is coal in the region, but the ore is moist
and has other material in it so that it requires special
processing.

Several other groups of islands have small supplies,
none of them more than can be used locally, if they
were developed, and few of them are.
* * *

Iron, then, is a treasure to us in the Earth's store-
house. It is well that there is much of it!

CHAPTER VII

WATER

Everywhere the water is a thing of beauty,

gleaming in the dewdrop;

singing in the summer rain ;

shining in the ice-gems

till the leaves all seem to turn to living jewels;

spreading a golden veil over the setting sun ;

or a white gauze around the midnight moon.

JOHN B. GOUGH

WATER A TREASURE in our Earth's storehouse! Is it
a treasure?

Just what would your life be without it? Think,
think hard. You will agree that water is a treasure.
For our very life depends upon water plant life,
animal life, human life. Think of the Earth without
life!

255

256 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

But more than that, think of the ways in which we
use water, besides drinking it! Think of the heat and
power, steam power and electric power ! Think of the
way we mix things with it ! Think of how it has made
the wood grow that is your furniture, your house !
Think of the hundred ways it enters into our lives!

But I hear you laugh. " Water is not in rock like
the other treasures. It is neither mineral nor metal!"

But, isn't it? How is it different? "Why," you say,
"it is liquid!" Yes, it is, but so is iron if heated up
to 1,535 C, so is copper if heated up to 1,083 C,
and so is gold if heated up to 1,063 C, and so is tin
if heated up to 232 C.

Suppose we go on a short polar expedition. Our ship
is jammed in an ice floe. Our water supply is all gone.
You have been on a desert island and found that gold
did not help you. But water you must have. Where
can we get it near the North Pole? Out there, outside
the ship, is ice. But we cannot drink, nor wash clothes
in ice. But heat the ice to 32 F, or C, and you
have water! Water will boil at 212 F, or 100 C

But, you say, each one of all those other minerals
has its own crystal shape. Yes, but so has water. A
water crystal is long and thin and six-sided. Undis-
turbed at freezing point it will always take the same
shape.

You can see that for yourself any day in the autumn,
if you live far enough north or south for water to
freeze. When going to school after a rain, you pass
a puddle on the sidewalk. It is beginning to freeze,
not enough for you to take a running slide, but long
needles of ice are floating on the water crystals ! Stoop

WATER 257

down. Look at them. Take them up in your hand if
they are not too fragile.

Yes, you see, water too has a crystal form.

A snow-storm is beginning. Catch some flakes.
Gently now ! We don't want to break them. Here is
a piece of black velvet. Now put the flakes under the
magnifying glass or microscope. Beautiful shapes,
made up of hundreds of tiny crystals, all with six sides,
all woven into beautiful patterns water slowly freez-
ing out of the air!

So water, like other minerals, freezes at a certain
temperature and boils at a certain temperature, and
it has its own crystal shape.

Water, then, is a true mineral.

THE STRANGE WAYS OF WATER 1

Two Gases

Water is a compound made up of two gases, hydro-
gen and oxygen. Funny, isn't it, that water comes out
of that! It is, again, the chemistry of atoms and mole-
cules. When you begin to study chemistry, one of your
early experiments will be to separate some water into
its two gases, and you will see, for yourself. Until
then, I shall just have to ask you to believe me.

Solid Water

You all know about water freezing. But do you
know that it is larger when frozen? It expands one-
tenth its size. And that gentle force of increasing in.
size is very powerful. Do not leave any water in a
sealed jar if it is going to freeze, and do be careful
of the radiator of your car. It will freeze and burst*

258 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

And so will your water pipes on a cold night if they
are exposed. Remember the top of your milk bottle!

Water Vapour

L&st summer was terrifically hot where I was. Every-
body was going around drooping like a wilted weed.
And whenever two people met, one would say,

"Isn't it hot?" It was like the refrain of a sons.

"It is not the heat, it is the humidity," would straight-
way be the reply.

The humidity the amount of water in the air!

Boil your tea-kettle. You see the water pass off into
vapour. It is in tiny particles. Then at a little distance
from the spout it is in tinier particles, so tiny you cannot
see them. When the air is humid it is filled with a
vapour of tiny particles of water, almost a gas. And
the hotter the air the more vapour it can hold.

If frozen water increases one-tenth in size, the water
vapour increases seventeen hundred times! Did you
ever go down into the hold of a steamship and watch
the machinery? I have. Or watch a train? How does
it work? What makes those big engine wheels go
round ?

Steam is made from water by burning oil or coal.
Now steam must increase in volume. It is like the laws
of the Medes and Persians, unalterable. If the volume
of steam is confined within a pipe or a boiler it presses
against all sides with tremendous force. That force is
used, let out, but directed so that it drives a piston. The
piston drives the wheels. If the pressure of steam gets
too great some of the steam is let out into the air by
a safety valve. You have seen a train let off steam.

WATER 259

Vapour May Burn You or Cool You

I hope you have never burned yourself with steam.
You may be badly burned with boiling water but steam
is worse. Just the physical process of turning boiling
water into steam demands more heat than to boil the
water.

But, strange to say, water vapour may make you
cooler. Put a dab of water on your arm and let it
dry off. It cools you. Why? The water passes off into
vapour, but to pass from water to vapour requires
heat. The heat is taken from your arm.

THE ENDLESS CYCLE

Water Goes Up

Where is the water of the Earth? In oceans, lakes,
rivers, swamps, spread over many places on the surface
of the Earth. The ocean, you remember, covers four-
fifths of the entire surface of the Earth. Besides that,
several continents have many lakes, and some of them
are very large. There is an enormous surface of water,
all lying spread to the sun's rays.

And how the sun does work! It makes the surface
layer of water into vapour all around the globe. Con-
tinuously that vapour rises. The hotter the sun makes
the atmosphere the more water-vapour the atmosphere
can hold. The sun 'draws' and 'draws' and 'draws' the
water, all the time, day and night, for when it is night
where you are, it is day on the other side of our Earth.

Now the ocean water, the greatest surface of all, is
full of salt, but the salt does not evaporate. It stays
in the ocean. You remember the experiment with salt
mixed with water in a glass. The water dries up we

260 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

say. It evaporates. It becomes water-vapour in the
air, but the salt is left in the glass. So in the oceans,
the salt is left behind. The vapour from the ocean is
as fresh water as the vapour from a freshwater lake.

Water Comes Down

The atmosphere gets so full of water-vapour that
it cannot hold another drop, unless it gets hotter still.
But sometimes instead of getting hotter a cool wind
comes up. The atmosphere simply cannot take it. The
draught is too much for it. The little particles are drawn
together and down it drops as rain.

And so it falls everywhere, ( on the just and on the
unjust'. A great deal of it goes back to the ocean from
which it came, for the ocean has the larger surface to
catch it. But mercifully some of it falls on the land.

THE FATEFUL HISTORY OF A DROP OF WATER

I am the daughter of the Earth and Water,

And the nursling of the Sky.
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores,

I change, but I cannot die.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

It floated on top of the Atlantic Ocean. It was blown
by a storm around some islands into the Gulf of Mexico
where it was warm, very warm. It hovered in and out
of the bays, and found it very hot. It was right on the
surface.

"I simply cannot stand the heat/' it moaned.

And it couldn't.

In the twinkling of an eye it burst and rose on the
warm air in tiny particles, higher and higher, climbing
a sunbeam. And all its particles mingled with those

WATER 261

of its neighbours. It was vapour now. When the sun
set, it grew cooler and people looking up said, "It is
clouding over, up there/'

But another day came. The sun shot down its scorch-
ing rays, and the clouds disappeared, but the vapour
was still there, though unseen. For hot air, as I said
before, can carry more unseen vapour than cold air.
One day it was near the mouth of the Mississippi River.
The next day it was following up the river. It was
very, very warm. And more and more particles of
vapour rose from the river to join the throng.

"It is terribly hot/' said a man down on the Earth,
mopping his brow.

"It is the humidity," said his neighbour.

Farther and farther up the Mississippi the vapour
travelled. Once or twice in the coolness of the evening
it was visible as clouds, and then it disappeared again.

"An area of low pressure is coming up from the
South," said the Weatherman, and the barometer fell.
For moist air is lighter than dry air.

The vapour-filled air found itself near the Canadian
border and, in the shoving and jostling of the clouds,
floated a little higher or lower, and was struck in the
face by some colder air. That, it just couldn't stand.
All the particles ran together and formed drops and
down they came.

"Rain," sighed the people below.

"Such a relief P' And rain it did.

Did our drop fall on the Canadian side or the United
States side? I do not know. For clouds and water
never learned political history, though geography is
the breath of life to them.

262 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Swamp Life

Anyway, down it fell. It soaked into the earth, it
and other drops with it. Down it slipped from a blade
of grass to a dead root. It was in a swamp. For a
long time it lay there. Slowly bits of refuse began to
dissolve in it, from the dead branches and leaves
around it. It became peaty water, yellow, tawny, not
pleasant to drink. It w r as occasionally ruffled by the
wind, or blown to one side. It gradually got over to
the centre where the lazy water sometimes moved a
little, sometimes rested. Slowlv it was borne a little
farther down, dirty and unhappy, but water just the
same. One day the wind gave an extra push. It began
to move a little. Why, it did not know. But it was
really because away up near the edge of the bog some
water had soaked through a part of the swamp barrier
and other water was moving up to take its place.
Farther and farther it was pulled and shoved, until
at the edge a slow stream flowed from the swamp.
Glad to be moving again our drop went on. Now it
ran more quickly. Some distance down it gurgled over
some pebbles, when plop! It struck a stone and was^
hurled right out of the stream !

Ground Water Life

It lay a while but didn't like the look of the sun, so
slipped down beneath the stone against which it had
been splashed. Not that it did not like floating as a
cloud. It did. But it was having adventures, not always
pleasant it is true, but it was seeing the world. Not yet
did it want to go back to the clouds. "The ocean is
my home," it thought.

It slipped farther down, around this grain of sand

WATER 263

and around that. A number of other drops followed it.
Together they sank lower and lower. It took quite a
while. It was very dark. But as it slowly filtered through
the sand it said to itself, "I am getting clean again, pure
and clean."

Down, down, the drops went, now through sand, now
slowly, very slowly along little openings in clay, then
through sand again.

Until away down there the drop began to hear and
feel more and more neighbours around it. Every grain
of sand or pebble had water around it. It and the few
that were splashed over with it were not alone. They
had reached the ground water level.

For almost everywhere beneath the soil there is a
level at which water stands. It cannot go farther be-
cause the rock or the clay beneath it is impervious. The
level may change from time to time according to the
rainfall. Or, the level here may be different from the
level there, because of the difference in the average of
rainfall in the two places, or, heavy clay may block its
flow in this or that direction. In another place the flow
may not be blocked, so it will flow more quickly.

Our drop did not know it, but it was beneath a farm.
Now the farmer wanted more water for his cattle. He
decided to put down a well. As the digging and scrap-
ing went on, our drop edged farther and farther away.
It did not want to go up again to be swallowed by a
cow or a pig. That was all very well. It is a worthy
fate, "but I want to see more of the world, above and
below, and anyway, the ocean is my home/' it thought.
And shoved its neighbours a bit impolitely.

Just in time !

264 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

"Water!" cried the farmer as the water rushed into
his well. Up it went !

But our drop had got beyond the pull of that first
water to enter the well. It decided to hurry, and first
thing it knew it tumbled with others into a crack in the
rock against which and over which the soil lay. " An-
other adventure," thought the drop. "And I am so
much cooler and cleaner." And on it went, slowlv mov-
ing down, pulled by some unseen, unknown Dower.

And as the water stood or slowly flowed through the
rock it was joined by other small- seepings of water.

All the way down, and it was a long way, slowly,
silently but constantly it was dissolving out mineral mat-
ter from the rock, making the fissure wider and wider
and then making a network of fissures. And the busy
drop of water itself was changing.

It fell from the sky a pure drop of water, soft water
we call it. In the swamp it was soiled with decaying
life. Filtering through the sand it was cleansed, and
here in the fissures of rock it was dissolving out and
carrying away mineral matter. It was becoming 'hard'
water.

Down it sank through the fissures down to some
porous sandy rock. And with it followed all the other
drops. Here it slipped around this grain and that, some-
times stopped by grains cemented together.

Suddenly a distant noise alarmed it. A thud, thud!
Time after time, thud ! thud ! Then a pause.

"I know," said a neighbouring drop. "Men are drill-
ing a well in the rock."

"Another well," shuddered the drop. "I thought I

WATER 265

had passed that danger. 1 * And it hurried on beyond the
spot

For wells are drilled through rock down to porous
rock where large supplies of water collect because it
can flow more freely.

Hurry, hurry! Faster, faster! Why, it knew not.
When suddenly it burst into daylight in a bubbling
spring from a crack in the rock. Pure, clean, cold, fresh
water, sparkling in the sunshine.

Some boys and girls came up the trail.

"Hey," shouted the foremost, "here is a spring!"

"Oh," said the drop, "the ocean is my home," and it
jumped over a stone down the other side, racing over
bright pebbles. It got away. The picnickers drank
great cupfuls of drops that were behind it

On it went tumbling down and down, under a tiny
road bridge and into a larger stream. The stream flow T -
ed on into Rainy Lake or somewhere else near the bor-
der. It flowed on to Lake Superior.

"Oh!" thought the drop, "my ocean home!" But it
was wrong. Lake Superior is freshwater and the ocean
is salt water. The drop soon realized its mistake, and
slowly moved on. How or why it hardly knew, except
that all water must flow down to the ocean, if possible.

Sometimes on the surface of the great lake it was
frozen into ice. Sometimes for years together it was far
down below the freezing level, even in winter, or far
out from shore where it never freezes in those great
restless lakes. Years and years it took to pass through
Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie
and all the rivers between. Perhaps in places it went by
the canals. I do not know.

266 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

But it did not go by the Welland Canal. I know, be-
cause it came down the Niagara River. Faster and
faster it began to run, pushed and pulled. And now it
was at the brink of Niagara Falls, one brief moment!

And down below stood a man! A great man, who
has found out some of the laws of the Universe. Tall,
grey-headed, he stood there looking up. He stood there
very still. And in his mind he saw not only the drops,
the millions and millions of drops of water that hurled
over that precipice, but he saw the many more millions
of atoms which made up the drops. His mind reached
out to the infiniteness, the endlessness of that number.
I know. I heard him tell it. He was Sir Oliver Lodge.

And there was our drop of water just on the edge,
when down it plunged, far down below the surface, to
be tossed upward again into the Whirlpool. On and
on swiftly to Lake Ontario !

Then the drop rested again for many long years.
Sometimes it helped bear on its back the big boats that
carry the wheat down to the ships that take it far and
wide over the world. Sometimes it was whipped in high
sport by the wind from the top of a wave, to fall back
again. Many, many of its companions were drawn up
by the sun to be dropped in rain and go through their
adventures again. But more of them slowly made their
way down to the St. Lawrence, again to jump and
shout and splash over rapid after rapid and then on
again. Once it was caught in a power-plant race where
its struggle down to the sea helped to turn a great tur-
bine to make electricity go out over the land. On again,
on to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, so near the ocean f And
one never-to-be-forgotten day our drop was hurried by

WATER 267

the prow of a great ocean liner, by wind and ebbing
tide, out through the Straits of Belle Isle, out to the
Atlantic Ocean.

"Oh," sighed the drop happily, as it floated on the
heavier salt water. "Home at last!"

But home does not last, not for a drop of restless
water. It may be taken up by the sun and start its rounds
all over again. This time it may be caught in a well, or
be a fresh, cool drink for beast or man, or make a plant
happy, or hang a dewdrop on a rose petal, or help turn
a turbine. It may come up as a mineral spring to which
people come from far and wide to be healed. It may
soak down near a volcano and be hurtled out as steam,
or it may enter into the making of a crystal of molten
rock, for it does.

It may do one or other or all of these things again
and again. Or, it may, it just may, be caught in a boy's
or a girl's experiment in chemistry class and be separat-
ed into hydrogen and oxygen. Even then it is not gone.
It is just changed into something else. It is never really
destroyed! Never!

* * *

It is a great treasure, perhaps the greatest, in the
Treasure store of the Earth.

CHAPTER VIII

SALT

... *. ..^ 'V^, ,*?*'''?

SUMMER DAY I lay floating in, or on, Long Island
Sound. My eyes were closed in the sunshine, the water
lay like a soft mattress beneath ! I thought of the many
lakes and rivers in which I had swum and floated. But
in none was floating like this !

Why? The lakes and rivers were freshwater. Long
Island Sound look at your map is an arm of the
sea. Well, and what is the difference? Salt just salt!

Salt comes from the rocks. It was in the original ma-
terial at the birth of the Earth. It is still probably in
solution in steam in places within the Earth. You know
how easily it dissolves. On the surface the rivers and
lakes and the ocean dissolve it, wherever they run over
or through or beat against rocks that contain it. There

268

SALT 269

is so little in the rivers it cannot be noticed. But in the
lakes of 'hard' water there is more. And it is all carried
to the sea, and left right there on its doorstep. More
and more is added every year. And the ocean, poor
thing, has no way of getting rid of it. Though it did
get even with the land sometimes. When the seas came
up over the continents and then withdrew in some cases,
they left some of their salt behind.

Just common salt! You put a little from a salt-cellar
on your dinner. Your mother or someone else puts it
in her cooking. So, vou use it for food.

Have you a sore throat? Gargle with salt and water.
Have you a nasty cut or open bruise? Wash it gently
with salt water. Yes, it hurts, but it is antiseptic, that
is, it kills the germs that may have got into the wound.
It is really the same thing as a gargle, for there, too,
it kills the germs. You use it, then, for medicine.

Is there a spot on a saucepan? Rub it with a little
salt. You will be surprised at the result.

Ummmm ! Um ! Smell it, bacon and coffee for break-
fast!

u ls the bacon too salty?" asks mother.

"Oh, no! It is just right," you answer.

"This lot seemed a little salty, so I soaked it a few
minutes," adds mother, by way of an explanation of her
first question.

What makes the bacon salty, anyway?

Salt is put into it to preserve it Otherwise it would
not keep. And haven't you noticed it in ham? And in
fish? That is to 'cure' it 'Cure' comes from a Latin
word 'curare', 'to take care of. The salt is used to pre-

270 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

serve food. It kills the little organisms that would spoil
it, just as it kills the microbes in your throat.

And it is in our bodies! Our very perspiration is
salty. You know that. It is in our very blood ! Or rather
our blood is in it. The blood plasma we give to the Red
Cross floats about our bodies in brine. Salt is almost as
vital as water!

WHAT IS SALT?

Salt, common salt, is really a mineral called sodium
chloride. You know what it looks like grains, cube-
shaped when perfect, clear, translucent. It melts at
1,458 F. or 810 C, and boils at approximately 2,610
F. or 1,450 C. That does not tell you much, does it?
It just shows you it is like other minerals, and being a
mineral we find it in our Earth's storehouse.

SALT IN HUMAN HISTORY

Did our first savage friend in Persia have salt?
Probably not. It is not long since some races in Siberia
began to use salt. Their government taught them to use
it. The Kirghizes of Turkestan do not use it on their
food, nor the Bedouins of Arabia. Some of the Amer-
ican Indians did not use salt when the white man ar-
rived.

These are all people who wander about, nomadic
tribes we call them. They live on animal food, milk and
meat, whatever they can catch. It is probable that in
this food they get what salt they require in one form or
another.

Man first used salt when he began to settle down
and plant vegetables. But when man wanted salt, want

SALT 271

it he did! And there have been many wars about salt
springs.

When more and more tribes became agricultural and
accustomed to use salt it became a precious thing, even
a sacred thing. The Jews offered it to Jehovah with
their first fruits. It was used among the Greeks and
Romans with offerings to the gods, and a covenant was
sealed over a sacrificial meal seasoned with salt "It is
a covenant of salt for ever before the Lord unto thee
and to thy seed with thee," Numbers XVIII, verse 19.
A meal with salt was sacred, a friend who had eaten
your salt was a friend for life. It is still so among some
oriental peoples "Now because we eat the salt of the
palace and it is not meet for us to see the kind's dis-
honour", Ezra IV, verse 14, R.V.

Homer tells of it being used in the feasts of his he-
roes. The inhabitants of Sierra Leone (look at your
map of Africa) used to give everything, even wives and
children for it. Among inland people a salt spring was
considered a gift of the gods, and even now it is a great
luxury. Boys and girls in those regions like to suck it
as you do candy.

The Roman soldier was given salt in his ration.
When salt was missing he was given something else,
usually money, and that was his 'salary', that is, in place
of salt. So when your father gets his salary it is his salt
money. That was the way the word 'salary' was born.
In Abyssinia and other parts of Africa and in Thibet,
cakes of salt are still used for money.

Trade Routes

Before there were automobiles or trains, across Asia,
North Africa and Europe were well-travelled roads,

272 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

along which moved camels or horses laden with bur-
dens. And in early days much of the load was salt. One
of the oldest roads in Italy, the Via Salaria, was to
carry salt from Ostia to the Sabine country. The cara-
van roads of the Libyan desert were to carry salt and
to-day salt is one of the chief articles of commerce in
the Sahara desert.

So important is salt to humankind that from early
times until now in many lands governments have raised
money by a tax on salt, because it is a tax of which
everyone has to pay a small part. Not always a wise
way in countries with a despotic government! To get
around the tax collector, the salt dealers sold impure
salt. But if salt can raise money for governments be-
cause everyone has to use it, for the same reason gov-
ernments use it to help the health of people.

You have a thyroid gland. Did you know that? It is
in your neck. Sometimes it goes on strike, or only works
half speed. Then the doctor gives you iodine. If you
live near the sea, and are eating much sea food you get
iodine without a doctor. There is considerable in sea-
water. Fish and oysters, shrimps and mussels and even
seaweed take it up. You get it by eating them. If you
live inland you do not get so much, and you need it.

Now everybody eats salt, so the government sees that
the salt is iodized, that is, small quantities of iodine are
put in it.

WHERE DO WE FIND SALT?
In the Ocean

There is so much of it in the ocean that the water is
heavier than freshwater, more buoyant. It will hold you
up more easily. If you have learned to swim or float in

SALT 273

freshwater, there is a big surprise waiting for you when
you jump into ocean water.

In many countries that border on the ocean the salt
is taken from the sea-water.

Go to France or Spain, along the coast somewhere.
See that long low shore. Over there are rows of low
flat pools, basins rather. They are empty now. We can
look at them.

They are fairly level. The one nearest the shore is
about at high tide level. The others farther back are
just a little lower. The floor of each is covered with pud-
dled clay. Water will not soak through. In some places
these salt basins have cement floors.

The tide is coming in. Coming higher and higher up
the shore. It can get in down that channel. Now the
first big basin is full. Taste the water. Salty, isn't it?
The tide runs out. The channel is closed. The water is
caught, and no more can get in until it is wanted.

And now the sun begins to work. It is a hot sun in
Southern France, and in those other countries where
salt is taken from the sea. From the surface of the pool
the water becomes vapour and climbs the sun's rays into
the atmosphere, but not the salt. It stays in the pool.

Taste it again. Saltier and saltier ! There is the same
amount of salt, but less water. It is more 'concentrated'.
The next basin is a little lower. The water heavy with
salt slowly trickles into it. As it gently passes down
from one basin to another it becomes more and more
salty. Until over here, at the last basin, the salt is fall-
ing to the bottom. The water dries up. The salt is
left just as it is when salty water is left standing in a
glass of water.

274 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

In this basin, see, it is raked up into rows and heaps
and drained again.

But it is not always pure. Some of the soil gets in it,
and there are other salts in it. If only a little soiled it
may be sold cheaply. If there is too much other matter
it may be washed. Some of the other salts will dissolve
out more quickly than our salt, so they can be washed
away with freshwater. Then the rest may be dissolved
in freshwater which is boiled off leaving the clear crvs-
tals of salt.

And believe it or not, in Northern Russia and Siber-
ia they use ice to separate the salt and water. The sun
is not hot enough to help them there, at least it is hot
for too short a time.

Do you remember the short polar trip we took when
talking about water? When stuck in an ice floe in the
Arctic we got a drink by melting ice. Did it occur to you
that the ice might be salty? It did to me. But very little,
if any, salt freezes in the water. It is the water of the
sea that freezes not the salt. There might be salt spray
on it, but dig beneath.

So the northern Russians freeze their water and take
off the ice. The liquid at the bottom like that which was
drained from pool to pool in France and Spain, becomes
more and more salty.

From Brines

In many countries, India, Russia, United States and
in sections of Africa there are salt brines. Imagine
ready-made brines down in the Earth !

Hospitals and Sanatoriums have sprung up around
salt springs all over Europe and America. Sick people
go to get 'treatments'. In the salt springs there are other

SALT 275

salts than the salt we eat. They all help, if not to make
people well, at least to make them better.

We, in North America, have known of 'salt licks'
all our lives, places where salt springs come out and all
the wild animals come trooping down to get their salt.

But, as a rule, the reservoir of these brines is not
enough to make salt to sell as salt. There are a few.
however, both in Europe and in North America large
enough to make it worth while to evaporate the brine
for salt.

But we have more brine than that right at the surface.
There are places where Dame Nature is making salt
all the time. There is the Dead Sea in Palestine. It is
becoming saltier and saltier ! Even the river Jordan
brings more salt into it. And the climate is so hot and
dry that the sun gets in its innings. Even though some
freshwater comes in, more is lost by evaporation. Some
day, probably not in my time nor in yours, but in time
it will just dry up and leave a bed of salt.

But we have another nearer home ! Great Salt Lake
in the State of Utah. Even the shore sand is not sand
at all, but salt, real salt! I have driven over it. Once
it was used for a motor speed race. It makes such a
hard road, never dusty.

There is other salt both in Palestine and in Utah, as
well as ready-made brine, in quantities.

And there are other salty waters on their way to
become briny in time. Land-locked seas like the Cas-
pian Sea, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea are
usually more salty than the open ocean. Of course much
freshwater runs into them from rivers, but their eva-
poration is very great.

276 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Rock Salt

Salt a rock! Yes, it is. In India there are mountains
called the Salt Range. Of course they are not all salt,
nor even mostly salt, but there is so much salt found
there that they have been so named.

Rock salt is called halite. When perfectly formed
each crystal is a water-coloured cube. Sometimes when
formed very fast it is just outside, a box-like shell.

But from where does all this salt come?

Volcanoes may throw out salt. There is some in the
lavas of Vesuvius. But that quantity is small.

The rock salt was left by the seas that invaded the
continents. I have seen large cubic crystals or fossil
salt in the rocks at the very bottom of Page Two in
the Earth's story.

All through the ages rocks were deposited, but would
the salt settle out of the water each time, too? Prob-
ably not. When the sea withdrew from the continents
it probably left basins of salt water just like the Dead
Sea and Great Salt Lake, cut off by some barrier. It
could not get out. And slowly the water in them eva-
porated. They became more and more salty. Finally, it
was salt, not salt water.

On top of the salt in many places there are thick
beds of gypsum. Plaster. of paris is gypsum, used to
make the smooth surface of plaster walls, or to make
models. You know it.

Now, how or why is the gypsum there, and why is
it on top ?

It, too, must have been in the trapped salt lagoon.
Salt will become solid more quickly than gypsum. So
when the salt crystallized out, it fell to the bottom, and

SALT 277

the gypsum was left in the liquid on top. When the
water was still further evaporated, down would fall
the gypsum.

Did you ask me why the floor of the sea is not cov-
ered with salt? There is too much water in it. Think
of all the freshwater pouring into it. Salt forms in
land-locked lagoons where the salt water has been left
behind, and where the loss of water by the work of the
sun is greater than the freshwater coming in.

Salt Domes

What are they? Plugs of salt would suggest a bet-
ter picture of them.

If you think of salt settling from a land-locked basin
you expect it to be flat or at least basin-like, but these
are upright plugs of rock salt. How did they happen?
They are not like Lot's wife upright on the surface but
beneath the surface, in some cases, far below.

They are not in one country but in many countries,
in Germany, Persia, Palestine, and the United States.

Take a large piece of plasticine. Pat it out flat just
like a bed of salt after the water has evaporated. Press
from the sides and watch it push up. That will give you
some idea of what might happen to the salt, if it were
so pressed. But the salt beds are covered with firmer
rock which breaks and the salt first bows up, then
pushes into the cracks. Some people believe that the
process by which the salt moves up into the cracks may
be the same as that by which glaciers move down when
pressed out by the weight of snow and ice above, that
is, the crystals pressed upon at the sides have less press-
ure on top, because the covering rock has been cracked

278 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

above it. Tiny particles melt and then re-crystallize in
the freer area. Other people think this is not the way
at all. Or, it may depend on the amount of water in the
salt. More water would make it more mobile. It may
be caused in one or both of these ways. Just how it
moves we are not sure. But whatever the method, slow-
ly the salt moves up. Certainly, wherever there are
domes the rocks have been pushed about, but not by
the salt. It is too weak. Other forces must have done
the pushing, and the salt has pressed into the spaces. In
a region where movement has taken place more than
once, the salt may move higher each time.

Oil and Salt

In the States of Louisiana and Texas, oil has been
found near these domes. So the oil men began eagerly
to look for oil near all salt domes wherever they are
known in the world.

But they were fooled 1 It is true that some oil has
been found near salt domes in other countries, in Persia
for instance, but not in the great quantities in which it
occurs in the Gulf States, and there is no oil at all near
many salt domes.

Now why is that?

Salt cannot make oil, nor can oil make salt. In the
Gulf States there were vast reservoirs of oil. When the
rocks were pushed up both the oil and salt moved up,
because they were both of a nature that could move. In
Persia and those other countries there was not so much
oil where the salt happened to be formed. And in some
places there was no oil at all.

So, it is not that salt and oil are connected but that
when they were near one another the same forces made

SALT 279

them move. When oil was present without the salt it
moved up, when salt was present without the oil it mov-
ed up.

Mining Rock Salt

If it is on the surface, rock salt can be mined like
any other mineral. Very pure salt is mined this way in
the United States and in Galicia. It is mined in lumps
about one foot in diameter, then crushed and sieved,
ground between rollers and screened into four sizes. It
sounds nice and easy. But it has its drawbacks. When
standing around in sacks waiting for you or somebody
else to buy it, it goes back into one big mass.

But much of the world's salt supply is buried far
down. This salt is mined in a way al lits own. It is
brined to be mined.

Few other minerals will dissolve so easily in water.
Bore-holes are driven down through the overlying ma-
terial to the salt beds. Freshwater is poured in. It is
left until it has dissolved all the salt it can hold and
then drawn up again. The brine is then run into large
pans, and the water evaporated. In England and in
the United States and Canada the sun is not hot enough,
so artificial heat is used to evaporate the water. The
principle is just the same as evaporating sea-water.
From the pans it is raked into rows, and then into heaps
to drain and dry, just as described before.

Kinds of Salt

Do you want table salt, sir ? All right, we make that
by boiling rapidly, keeping it moving. When dried, be-
hold the fine salt!

280 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

Do you want butter and cheese salt, sir? Very well,
we will leave it a little moist. It mistes better with the
butter or cheese.

Do you want fish salt, sir, to preserve your fish for
shipping? Over here. We do not boil this, and it forms
in larger crystals.

But perhaps, sir, you want a heavy block of salt for
your cattle in the field? That is pressed into great cubes.
And how the cows like it !

And there are a number of other grades of salt for
different purposes.

THE SALT OF THE EARTH

Europe

We have learned that salt is taken from the sea in
France, Spain, Italy and England, and other countries
with low coast lines. In England deep-lying beds of salt
have been found particularly in Cheshire, and there is
no longer much made from sea-water.

There are great salt reserves in Austria and Ger-
many which have not been mentioned, just because there
are so many everywhere.

Africa

We have spoken of the salt roads in Northern Afri-
ca but come with me to South Africa.

We will go to the Transvaal, just about twenty-five
miles north and west of Pretoria. Ride out over the un-
dulating bushveld, see that low ridge of land, tree-cov-
ered. We can hardly see it until we reach it.

Let us go up the gentle slope.

What a peculiar sight on the other side ! A crater-

SALT 281

like hollow, steep-sided, clothed with scrub and grass.
Among the scrub and grass are broken blocks of granite.
And at the bottom what?

In the centre an irregular dark-coloured pool. From
the pool to the edge, what is it? White sand? No, salt!
All high above sea-level, in the centre of a continent!
They tell me it is remarkably beautiful by moonlight.

From where came this crater full of salt? Is it a
crater? Is it a volcano? There is no lava here, just
blocks of granite. And there are no sea-laid rocks here.
Elsewhere salt has been connected with sea-water.

This is a most peculiar salt pan and that is what it is
called The Salt Pan.

Now, we learned that salt came into the sea original-
ly from the rocks. So it still is in the rocks far down.
Waters down there would dissolve it as elsewhere.
Steam at great depths would dissolve it. And it is
thought that this is a true volcano crater which was
blown up by steam only, without melted rock and in the
steam were salt solutions.

Asia

We spoke of salt in Northern Siberia. There is some
in China, though there has not been much development
there from their deep supplies. Practically all countries
have salt springs and surface supplies.

Australia

In the year 1829, more than 100 years ago, a ship
sailed from Australia, laden with 800 fur seal skins,
400 black seal skins, 2,500 kangaroo skins. Now Aus-
tralia is a warm country. Skins will not keep long, trav-
elling in those hot regions. They were preserved in salt.

282 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

In addition the ship carried two casks (I don't know
how large) of seal oil and twenty tons of salt.

There were not many people in Australia one hun-
dred years ago. Certainly there were no salt factories.
But on Kangaroo Island there are some natural salt
pans. This is what was used. And the climate in parts
of Australia, hot and with little rainfall, is just what is
needed for evaporating natural salt pans.

There are other sources of salt in Australia. Rock
salt has been found in considerable quantity and in some
parts salt is obtained by evaporating sea-water.

South America

There is salt in Peru. In fact, there is salt all along
the Pacific slope of the Andes Mountains. But not much
has been told about it yet, although it has been known
for a long time.

North America

There is an almost limitless quantity of salt in the
United States. In some places it is a brine, in some
places rock salt Rock salt occurs in Michigan, New
York, Ohio, Kansas, Louisiana, California, Texas,
Utah, and Virginia. Brines, too, occur in all these States
except Louisiana and Virginia. But Louisiana doesn't
need it.

You remember we spoke of the salt domes of the
Gulf Coast which at first made people think there was
some connection between salt and oil? Ift Louisiana
there are two great fields of domes, which seem to be
connected with the Texas domes. The source beds are
nearly 12,000 feet below the surface. The crystals are
shaped by much movement, and it is hard to tell on

SALT 283

what Page of the Story in Stone the salt lagoons were
left behind when the sea retreated, because the salt has
migrated up so high into much younger beds. Across
New York and Ohio is a salt-bearing horizon with great
supplies. It is even called the Saline formation, which
means the salt rocks.

I am sure I have missed some places. If you live in
a State which has not been mentioned where there is
salt, just forgive me. There are so many.

We saw a peculiar salt pan in South Africa. Now let
us go to Oklahoma. The country is flat, with just a few
low grassy hummocks, a little higher than the plain.
There is no leaf of grass on the plain and the floor is
silt and fine sand. If we go on a rainy day it is just an
ordinary plain, though horribly dreary. If we go again
on a bright day it is covered with a gleaming glistening
crust of salt crystals, reflecting back the sun like snow.

From where does it come ? There are no salt springs
around. But dig a hole and you get brine. It is thought
that perhaps some porous salt-bearing bed is so tilted
that its contents ooze into the area below the plain.

In Canada there are also many sources of salt. Com-
paratively recently a bed of rock salt was found at Mal-
agash, N.S. Its thickness cannot be exactly measured
but it is more than 300 feet and less than 500 feet
thick. And there are brines in Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick. So far no large supply had been found in
Quebec, though some springs are known. The salt of
Western Ontario, both brines and rock salt, has been
known and used for many years. Because Ontario salt
has been near the railways, roads $nd shipping, it has

284 THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET

been carried far over Canada, to those places lacking
salt or where it has not been developed.

Salt is not new to Manitoba, but a bed has been
found buried under 1,500 feet of overmantle. So, now
Manitoba salt for Manitobans!

In Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Mackenzie Val-
ley numerous salt springs probably mean an under-
ground supply, but Alberta has also a deep-seated bed
400 feet thick, as yet, undeveloped. It lies right upon
those ancient rocks of Page One in the Story in Stone.
British Columbia has some rock salt but far from rail
head, so most of British Columbia salt comes from Cal-
ifornia.

And so North America is well salted.

There are many, many other treasures in the Store-
house of the Earth. If I were to tell of them all, the
books would make a library. These are only a few of
the everyday ones. So common are they that we al-
most forget they are treasures. But they are. Great
Treasures !

Index

Abyssinia, 271
Adirondacks, 23, 100, 107
Africa, 8, 21, 22, 27, 55, 74, 76,

102, 125, 149, 167, 179, 189,

214, 232, 271
Alabama, 178, 251
Alaska, 8, 157, 179, 216
Alberta, 136, 216, 230, 231, 284
Alexandria, 55
Algeria, 253
Alligators, 135
Alloys, 183
Alps, 16, 19, 23, 142
Amazon River, 38, 55
Ammonite(s), 116, 133, 134, 139
Amphibians, 123
Amundsen, R. E. G., 8
Andes, 121, 131, 177, 179, 282
Animal life, 78, 113, 114, 122,205
Animals, 109, 118, 131, 147
Antarctica, 8, 21, 22, 143
Antarctic Ocean, 8
Anthracite, 220, 229, 232
Apes, 79, 149
Appalachians, 29, in, 112, 120,

121, 141, 178, 216, 230
Arabia, 270
Arctic, 124

Arctic Ocean, 8, 21, 55
Argentina, 27
Arizona, 30, 157, 187, 237
Ash(es)

Volcanic, 25, 72, 100, 121, 128,

130, 141
Wood, 219
Asia, 21, 22, 47, 107, 125, 144,

146, 148, 149, 157, 167, 189,

198, 213, 232, 254
Asphalt base, 211, 212
Asphalt Lake, 215
Athens, 57

Atlantic Ocean, 8, 27, 38
Atlas Mountains, 253

Atomic bomb, 102
Australasia, 8, 16, 233, 254
Australia, 8, 17, 21, 22, 27, 77,

107, 177, 179, i9 198. *33
254, 281
Austria, 253, 280

Backbone, 119

Bacteria, 68

Baffin Island, 70, 74, 77

Bahrein, 213

Baker, Mount, 141

Baku, 213, 214

Banka Island, 194, 197

Bartlett Trough, 74

Batholith, 128

Bats, 58, 64

Bay of Biscay, 73

Bear, 57, 152, 155, 156

Beasts, 94

Behring Sea, 8, 157

Behring Straits, 179

Belgian Congo, 102

Belgium, 253

Birds, 94, 137, *39, *54

Birth of the Earth, 87, 90, 237

Birth of the Rocky Mountains,

130

Bison, 57, 149
Bituminous coal, 227, 228
Black Sea, 275
Bob-cat, 157
Bohemia, 198
Bolivia, 194, 197
Bones, 120, 136, 137, 157
Boss, 106, 107
Boulder hills, 124, 146
Brachiopods, 114, 115, 118
Brains, 80, 116, 118, 138
Bran oil, 221
Brazil, 252
Brass, 183, 185
Breathing apparatus, 115

285

286

INDEX

Britain and British Isles, 8, 196,

252

British Columbia, 109, 179, 284
Brontosaurus, 136
Bronze, 183, 185, 189, 193, 246
Bronze Age, 195, 246
Buenos Aires, 54
Buried ridges. See Ridges
Burma, 185, 213
Byrd, Admiral, 8

Calcium carbonate, 243
California, 32, 44, 52, 75, 127,
128, 141, 176, 179, 216, 282,
284

Camel (s), 27, 155, 157
Canada, 27, 42, 65, 101, 113, 124,
142, 143, 146, 150, 161, 176,
185, 189, 198, 215, 221, 229,
233, 251, 279
Canadian Shield, 100, 101, 107,

177, 178, 179, 229, 239, 252
Canals, 47, 127
Cannel coal, 228
Canyon (s), 6, 49, 50
Carbon, no, 204, 218, 226, 230,

250

Caribbean Sea, 8, 200
Carlsbad Caverns, 58, 61
Caspian Sea, 214, 275
Catskill Mountains, 30
Caucasian Mountains, 213
Caves and Caverns, 56-65, 102,

148, 149, i55 157
Stalactites, 59
Stalagmites, 61
Pools of water, 61
Blind fish, 62
How made, 63
Caves of the world, 64
Cave-bear, 149
Cave man, 245
Central America, 48
Central Provinces of India, 184
Central States, 55
Centre of the earth, 88, 237
Qereals, 138
Chamberlain, T. C., 88
Champlain Lake, 146

Charon, 62

Cheddar Caves, 65

Chemistry, 171, 187, 204, 218, 235

Chicago, 27

Chile, 24, 189, 252

Chiltern Hills, 30

China, 132, 149, 179, 192, 213,

232, 254, 281
Chords, 94, 100, 104, 105, in,

126, 128, 130, 141
Chromium, 193
Clam, 115, 1x8
Clay, 35, 36
Clouds, 261
Coal, 80, 114, 217-233

Is made, 114

Hydrocarbon family, 218

Ash, 219

Water, 219

Gas, 219

By-products, 220

Coal balls, 221

Wood to coal, 226

Brown coal, 227

Bituminous coal, 227

Cannel coal, 228

Anthracite coal, 229

Where do we find coal ? 23 1
Coal forests, 122
Coal oil, 201
Coal-tar, 220
Coast Range, 141
Cobalt region, 106
Coke, 220
Colombia, 215, 233
Colorado, 216
Colorado River, 50, 109
Columbia River and Plateau, 32,

141

Combustion engines, 200
Composition, 79, 95, 14x1, 241
Connecticut, 136

Continent(s), 6, 7, 8, 20, 21, 22,
26, 100, 104, in, 112, 121,
129, 132.

Strange doings of, 21

Continental glacier(s), 8, 143
Continental shelf, 77

INDEX

287

Copper, 1 06, 166, i&l-lSp, 193

Like red gold, 181

Is soft, 182

Brass, 183

Bronze, 183

Human uses, 184

How long has it been used?
184

What and where is copper?
186

How do we get it out? 188

Where found? 18^
Coral reefs, 118, 133
Cornwall, 189, 195, 196
Cotswolds, 30
Cowrie shells, 168
Crabs, 133
'Cracking' oil, 211
C rater (s), 32, 100, 130
Creatures, one-celled, 147
Crevices, 59, 61
Crinoids, 133
Crystals, n, 173, 267

Copper, 1 86

Iron, 237

Pyrite, 244

Water, 256

Salt, 274
Cuba, 74

Curie, Madame, 89
Cyanide of potash, 171
Cycle, 31, 259
Cyprus, 181

Dead Sea, 44, 214, 276

Deeps, 67

Deer, 155

Derricks, oil, 208, 215, 216

Desert, 39, 103, 108, 121, 126

Detroit River, 44

Devon, 195, 196

Diamonds, 162

Diesel engine, 200, 212

Dikes and Veins, 174, 177, 178

Also see Veins
Dinosaur(s), 135, 137, 139
Diplodocus Family, 136
Dismal Swamp, 225, 226
Dragons, 136, 137, 139
Dragon-flies, 114
Dripstone, 60
Dutch East Indies, 213, 254

Earth, 6-14.
As we know it, 5
Inside and outside, 6
Rock foundations, 10
Began, 85-90
In the past, 91

Earth a Treasure Storehouse, 159
Earth's crust, 10, 14, 31, 65, 90,

94 112, 130, 142, 180
East Indies, 194, 225
Egypt, 28, 55, 195, 214, 249
Electricity, 27, 187, 201, 203
Elephant(s), 57, 155, 157
England, 114, 127, 138, 185, 189,

195, 198, 215, 231, 253, 279,

280

Equator, 23, 124, 125
Erie, Lake, 44, 52
Eskimo, 157, 246
Eurasia, 8
Europe, 8, 16, 21, 22, 27, 47, 71,

107, 114, 125, 126, 144, 146,

148, 149, 157, 179, iH 198,

214, 252

Everest, Mount, 67, 75, 142
Evergreens, 132

Fault(s), 173, 174

Ferns, 80, 114, 121, 132, 135

Fig trees, 132

Fish, 62, 71, 81, 119, 120

Fish reptiles, 137

Flesh-eaters, 136

Flint, 156

Flood plains, 53

Floor of the desert, 39 ,

Florida, 193

Flowering plants, 78, 132, 146

Folds, 127

Footprints, 12, 67, 79, 80, 94, 123,

135

Forest (s), 132, 150, 151
Forests, fern, 114
Fort Norman, 215
France, 57, 65, 73, 181, 195,

273, 280

Frog's cousins, 122, 123
Frost, 40, 104, 140, 175
Fuel oils, 201
Fuijama, 24

Galicia, 279

288

INDEX

Gallery, 63, 170

Gaps in the story, 94

Gas, 89, 199, 203, 204, 206, 209,

210, 219, 220
At work, 210
Gas Family, 199, 203, 204
Gasoline, 199
Gastropods, 119
Germany, 138, 181, 189, 231, 253,

277, 280
Geysers, 25, 238
Gingkos, 132, 150
Glaciers, 22, 65, 143, 154, 156,

157 .
Globigerina Ooze, 72, 73, 76

Glossopteris, 232

Gold, 101, 128, 165-180, 1 88, 243

Of what use is gold? 166

Where do we get gold? 168

How does gold get into the
rock? 172

Melted masses, 173

Fault faces, 173

Dikes and veins, 174

Sheets, 174

Gold in queer places, 175

How old is gold? 177

Places were men find gold

now, 178

Gold standard, 168
Gorge (s), 48, 53
Gorillas, 149
Goshen, Land of, 55
Grand Canyon of the Colorado,

50, 107, 109
Granite, 12

Grass(es), 132, 138, 152, 153
Gravels, 129, 157, 172, 196
Great Basin, 142
Great Bear Lake, 101, 107
Great Lakes, 39, 44
Great Red Valley, 127
Great Salt Lake, 44, 276
Greenland, 22, 70, 71, 74, 143,

246

Grooves, glacial, 124, 145
Gulf Coast, 282
Gulf States, 278
Gulf Stream, 73
Gulf of Mexico, 74
Gypsum, 276, 277

Hades, 62

Haiti, 74

Halite, 276

Hard coal, 229

Hatteras, Cape, 73

Heavy Rocks under the Ocean,

77

Helderbergs, 30
Hematite, 241, 251, 252
Highlands of Scotland, 15, 24
Himalayas, 2^, 67, 142
History of the use of oil, 212
Hood, Mount, 141
Hornblende, 12
Horse (s), 147, 148, 149, *53
Hudson Bay, 104
Hudson River, 54
Hydrocarbons, 204, 218

Ice, 65, 94, 124, 143

Ice fields, 8, 65, 143, 178

Iceberg(s), 71, 105

Ice-cap, 71, 143, 144, 146

Iceland, 7

Icicle of travertine, 60

Idaho, 32, 109, 179

Illinois, 145, 251

Inca race, 125

India, 22, 126, 179, 185, 232, 254

Indian Ocean, 8, 21, 133

Insects, 58, 103, 114

Instrument, 67

Interlude, 83

Invasion(s), 113, 115

Irak, 213, 216

Iron, 50, 105, 145, 234-253

What is iron? 235

In igneous rock, 236

In sedimentary rock, 238

Bog iron, 240

Marcasite, 240

Native iron, 241

Limonite, 241

Hematite, 241

Magnetite, 242

Pyrite, 243

Man-made, 244

Wrought iron, 245

Cast iron, 248

Steel, 249

Where is the iron of the
world? 251

INDEX

289

Iron Age, 246
Israelites, fleeing, 47
Italy, 25, 60, 272, 280

Jamaica, 74

Japan, 24, 132, 150, 179, 189, 254

Jeans, Sir J. H., 89

Jeffreys, H., 89

Joggins Coast, 231

Just-Before-Now * Page Four,

135, 138, 140, 146, 147, 177,

179

Kansas, 282
Kentucky, 62, 64
Kerosene, 201
Keweenaw Peninsula, 185
Klondike, 176

Labrador, 252

Lagoons, 127, 132, 277, 283

Lake(s), 27, 28, 30, 40, 43 5<>

62, 65, 101, 145, 242
Land animals, 79, 80
Land plants, 79, 80
Lane-way of the Sea, 108, 129,

130

La Plata, 54
Laplace, 87, 88
Lassen Peak, 141
Laurentians, 15, 23, 25, 68
Lava(s), 7, n, 24, 25, 32, 90,

101, 104, 128, 142
Law(s), 87, 150
Lead, 194, 195

Learning to read the rocks, 127
Leaves, 18, 80, 136, 146, 150
Libyan Desert, 272
Life, 64, 78, 79, 80, 94, 109, in,

131, 146, 204
Lightning, 90, 103, 212
Lignite, 227
Limestone, 12, 13, 24, 50, 79, 127,

130

Limestone, sea-laid rock, 12
Limonite, 241

Line where there is nothing, 104
Lizards, 135
London, 27, 54, 172
Long Ago Page One, 99
Long Beach, California, 21
Louisiana, 278, 282

Lubricants, 201
Luray Caverns, 65
Luxembourg, 253
Lynx, 157

Mackenzie River, 38, 55, 215
Magnes, the Shepherd, 243
Magnetite, 242, 243, 251
Magnolias, 132
Malagash, N.S., 283
Malay Peninsula, 198
Mammals, 136, 138, 147
Mammoth, 155, 157
Mammoth Cave, 62, 64
Man, 79, 85, 95, n*> *3&> 138,

140, 147, 148, 150, 157
Manitoba, 101, 178, 284
Marble, 13
Marcasite, 240
Martinique Island, 132
Mediterranean Sea, 8, 21,47, *33

181, 195, 245, 249, 275
Mercury, 192
Mesabi Range, 251
'Mesas', 30

Mesopotamia, 149, 213
Metamorphic Rocks, 13
Meteorites, 88, 236, 246
Mexico, 65, 157, 179, 189, 216
Mica, 12
Michigan, 104, 105, 106, 107, 178,

185, 240, 251, 282
Middle Time- Page Three, 109,

126-139, 179
Minerals, n, 12, 90, 106, 128,

173, 219

Mine(s), 7, 168, 169, 176, 187
Miners, 170, 173, 196
Mining rock salt, 279
Minnesota, 105, 107, 178, 240,

251

Mint, 172
Mississippi River and Valley, 27,

38, 42, 54, 122, 225, 231, 251
Money, 162, 167, 168, 172
Montana, 109, 179
Montreal, 25, 27
Morocco, 253
Moss(es), 18, 132
Moulton, F. R., 88
Mountains, 6, /5-<?5, 100, 104,

107, 140, 142, 144, 177

290

INDEX

Mountains Come and Mountains
Go, 15-25

Where are the great moun-
tains? 1 6

A mountain climb, 17

From where did the mountains
come? 19

Strange doings of continents,
21

Very old mountains, 23

Made by volcanoes, 24
Mount Baker, 141
Mount Everest, 67, 75, 142
Mount Hood, 141
Mount Osorno, 24
Mount Ranier, 141
Mount Royal, 25
Mount Shasta, 141
Mount Tina, 75
Mountain-building, 31, 121, 174
Mud, 35, 41, 54, 70, 130

Nares Deep, 75

National Park, 64

Natural gas, 204, 206

Nautilus, 116, 117, 133, 134

Nevada, 32, 75

New Brunswick, 283

New England States, 120, 193

New Mexico, 58, 64

New Orleans, 54

New York, 23, 48, 54, 100, 121,

124, 185, 282, 283
New Zealand, 7, 233
Newfoundland, 252

Banks of, 71
Newton, Sir Isaac, 87
Niagara River and Falls, 44, 49,

Si, 5

Nickel, 1 06, 236
Nile River, 28, 38, 55
Nipigon, Lake, 44
North America, 8, 16, 19, 20, 21,

22, 24, 42, 70, 77, 99, 104,

IO7, IO8, 112, 113, I2O, 121,

124, 126, 128, 132, 133, 138,

143, 144, 146, 185

North Carolina, 73, 225
North Pole, 21, 243
North Sea, 8, 29
Northern Ontario, 101, 107
Northern Quebec, 101, 107

Nova Scotia, 71, 114, 178, 231,

283

Nuclei, 89
Nuggets, gold, 176

Ocean (s), 8, 19, 20, 40, 66, 67,

69, 103

Ocean floor, 68, 70, 76
Ochre, yellow, 240
Ohio, 251, 282, 283
Oil, 8 1, 141, 199-216
Oil and Gas, 199-216

What is oil? 200

What use is gas? 203

The Great Tribe or Family,
204

How old are the rocks? 206

Buried ridges, 207

An oil field, 208

Crude oil, 210

Crack it, 211

Refining oil, 211

History of oil, 212

Where? 213
Oil and Salt, 278
Oil Family, 199, 200, 201, 202,

206

Oklahoma, 283
Olden time Page Two, ///-

125, 177

Ontario, 27, 106, 178, 283
Ontario, Lake, 44, 52
Oregon, 32, 75, 141
Organ music, 94
Organisms, 68
Osorno, Mount, 24
Ottawa, 151, 172
Ottawa, Valley, 38, 146
Our Earth. See Earth
Oxides, 238
Pacific Coast, 179
Pacific Ocean, 8, 21, 48, 67, 127,

129, 130, 133

Painted Desert of Arizona, 127
Palestine, 44, 214, 249, 275, 277
Panama Canal, 48
Paraffin base, 211
Peace Tower of Ottawa, 193
Peacock's tail, 186
Peat, 230

Moss, 223

Bogs, 224

INDEX

291

Pelecypods, 118

Penguins, 137

Pennsylvania, 114, 122, 216, 230,

231
Persia, 87, 148, 214, 245, 270,

277, 278

Persian Gulf, 213
Peru, 32, 55, 125, 142, 166, 176,

189, 215, 233, 282
Petrified Forest of Arizona, 131
Pewter, 193, 194
Phillipine Islands, 67
Pigs, giant, 155
Pitchblende, 101
Placer gold, 176

Plains, 6, 26-33, 53, 73, 132, *5*
Plains Come and Plains Go, 26-

River-made plains, 28
Wave-made plains, 28
Plains that become mountains,

3
High plains become low plains,

30

Mountain plains, 31

Lava plains, 32
Plane trees, 132
Plant life, 78, 205, 255
Plants, 109, 131, 146
Plateau (x), 32, 33, 50, 75
Plates, bony, 120
Port(s), 27, 53
Portugal, 189
Prairie Provinces, 27
Precambrian Shield, 99
Pretoria, 253, 280
Prospectors, 176
Pyrite, 243, 244

Quartz, 12, 172, 174, 177, 243
Quebec, 178, 283
Quicksilver, 192

Radium, 89, 101
Railway tracks, 89
Rainier, Mount, 141
Rand, The, 179
Rapids and canals, 47
Rats, 58

Red clay, 72, 73, 76
Red Sea, 47

Reindeer, 57, 149
Reptiles, 135, 137, 138, 139
Rhinoceros, 152, 157
Rhythm, 40, 94, 140, 141

The great chords of, 100

Again the great, in

Strange new, 105, 124, 143

Changed, 102

Changing, 126
Ridges, buried, 208
Ripple-marks, 68
Ripples, huge, 130
Rivers, 6, 27, 28, 32, 4^-55, 64,

65, 102, 103, 107, 140
Rivers and their Valleys, 42-55

Rivers needed by man, 42

Rivers run to the sea, 43

A river is born, 44

Rapids and canals, 47

Gorge, 48

Canyon, 49

Lake, 50

Now a waterfall, 51

The valley grows wide, 52

Flood plains, 53

Port near the sea, 53

Last, the delta, 54

What is a river valley?, 55
Rock of Ages, 61
Rock words, 127
Rocks, 10, 17, 18, 37, 50, 68, 77>
100, 101, 104, 106, 107, 112,
130, 205, 206, 207

Melted, n

Sea-laid, 12

That are changed, 13
Rocky Mountains, 16, 19, 23, 109,
112, 121, 126, 130, 131, 135,
139, 177, 179

Rocky Mountain trough, 132, 179
Romans, 181, 195, 196
Roots of ancient mountains, 104,

178

Royal, Mount, 25
Royal Mint, 172
Rubies, 162
Ruhr Valley, 253
Rumania, 214
Rushes, 114, 132
Russia, 8, 27, 124, 179, 2x3, 216,
231* 253

292

INDEX

Sabre-toothed tiger, 153

St. Clair River, 44

St. Lawrence River, 38, 43, 55,

146

St. Mary River, 44
Salt(s), 38, 60, 68, 89, 102, 104,
188, 268-284

An antiseptic, 269

What is salt? 270

Salt in human history, 270

Trade routes, 271

In the ocean, 272

Salt tax, 272

In brines, 274

Rock salt, 276

Salt domes, 277

Oil and salt, 278

Mining rock salt, 279

Kinds of salt, 279

Salt of the Earth, 280
Salt Lake City, 187
Salt Range of India, 276
San Domingo, 75
San Francisco, 48
Sand, 35, 36, 40, 41, 53, 130
Sand dunes, 39
Sandstone, 12, 24, 40, 79, 127,

130

Saskatchewan, 284
Saturn, 88
Saxony, 198
Scandinavia, 8
Scotland, 124
Scott, Capt. R. F., 8
Sea(s), 8, 12, 53, 66-8/, 112, 137

Footprints of the sea, 67

Walk beneath the sea, 69-76

From Baffin Island to Green-
land, 70

From Nova Scotia to Europe,
71

From North Carolina to Af-
rica, 73

From Yucatan, 74

Shelf along the continent, 77

Heavy rocks under the ocean,

Life began in the sea, 78
Sea-bottom, 10, 14, 70
Seaweeds, 70, 79, 109, 112, 113
Seeds, 78

Shale, 12, 24, 40, 50, 68, 79, 127,

130

Shasta, Mount, 141
Shelf, 74, 77
Shell (s), 68, 79, 80, 127, 128,

146

Shenandoah Valley, 65
Shield, an old, 106
Shrimps, 117, 133
Shrubs, 132
Siberia, 189, 232
Sierra Leone, 271
Sierra Nevadas, 129, 130, 132,

141, 179
Silt, 50
Silver, 106, 166, 186, 188, 192,

'93

Sinai Peninsula, 213
Skeletons, 57, 123, 137, 149, *5<>
Sloths, giant, 155
Smith, William, 127
Snail(s), 58, 119
Snake (s), 135
Sodium chloride, 270
Soft coal, 227

Softer Notes, 94, 102, 121, 129
Soil, 10, 18, 53, 65, 145
'Solid flow', 22
Solution (s), 172, 174, 178
-South Africa, 27, 101, 138, 253
South America, 8, 16, 19, 20, 21,

22, 27, 32, 48, 76, 77 i<>7

123, 125, 176, 179, 189, 194,

214, 33, 252
South Pole, 8

Spain, 57, 189, *95, 253, 273, 280
Spanish Main, 162
Spears, 106
Sponges, 109, 147
Spores, 113

Spring(s), 44, 45, 49, 55, *3
Squid, 116
Stalactites, 59
Stalagmites, 61
Stalingrad, 213
Star(s), 87, 88, 89
Steam vapours, 172
Steel, 191, 249

Tempering, 249
Steeprock Lake, 251
Step(s), 49, 86

INDEX

293

Stone Age, 246
Stone Pages, 80

Words, 123

Tools, 149
Storehouse of the Earth, 180,

194, 198, 254, 267, 284
Story, 6, 79, 91, 93, 97. *"

Of one little lake, 222
Straits Settlements, 198
Strange ways of water, 21, 257
Street lights, 203
Styx, River, 62
Sudbury, Ontario, 106
Suez, 47
Sulphides, 238
Sulphur, 244
Sumatra, 198

Sun, 86, 88, 89, 108, 162, 163
Superior, Lake, 44, 104, 106, 185,

189, 241, 251
Surface of the Earth, 88, 105,

124, 173
Svithjod, 93
Swamp (s), 43, 44, 151

Plants, 114

Life, 262
Sweden, 253

Tadpoles, 122, 123

Talara in Peru, 214, 215

Tasmania, 233

Tea-kettle, 68, 192

Teeth, 136, 137, 139, 148, *53

Texas, 123, 216, 278, 282

Thames, 54

Thibet, 271

Thoughts (s), 86, 90

Tiber, 60

Tiger, 153, 157

Tin, 183, 189, /po-/p#, 247

How to make tin cans, 191

Tin-foil, 191

Sandy through the looking-
glass, 192

That tea-kettle again! 192

Jingle bells, 193

In your great-grandmother's
kitchen, 193

What is tin? 194

Where does it hide? 194

Tin of the ancients, 195

How tin is separated from the

rocks, 196
Where is the tin of the Earth

stored? 197
Tinstone, 196, 197
Tina, Mount, 75
Toffee, ii, 23, 101
Tools, 48, 150, 157, 184
Toronto, Ontario, 145
Track (s), 99, 170
Trade roads, 27
Transvaal, 280
Travertine, 59, 60
Treasure (s), 161, 162, 163, 180,

186, 189, 194. *9, 254. 255

267, 284
Trees, 78, 103, 127, 132, 135,

145, 146

With knees, 225
Tree-ferns, 132, 135
Trembling, 25, 89
Trilobites, 117
Trinidad, 201, 215
Trough (s), 19, 104, 109, 112,

127, 129

Truth(s), 86, 88
Tunisia, 253
Turkestan, 270
Turner Valley, 215
Turtles, 135, 139
Twins, 34-41, 68, 199
Twins-that-are-Everywhere, 34-

4*

Something about sand, 35
Something about clay, 35
The streams and rivers make

them, 36
The winds and rains make

them, 38

The ocean makes them, 39
Sand and mud made long ago,

40
Tyrannosaurus, 136

United States, 7, 27, 32, 55, 65,
101, 113, 124, 150, 161, 178,
189, 198, 215, 216, 233, 252,
277, 279, 282

Uranium, 101

Utah, 44, 187, 275, 276, 282

294

INDEX

Valley (s), 28, 49, 5* *o 2 105,

129

Vapour, 89, 174, 211, 259, 260
Varves, 146
Vaseline, 201
Veins, 172, 174, 194, 243

(See also Dikes)
Venezuela, 215, 252
Vesuvius, 25
Via Salaria, 272
Victoria Falls, 52
Virginia, 65, 225, 282
Volcano (es), 23, 24, 25, 27, 75,

76, loo, 121, 128, 130

Wales, 29, 231

Washington, 32, 141, 151, *7 2

Water, 219, 255-267

Crystal, 256

The strange ways of water,

2 57

Two gases, 257
Solid water, 257
Water vapour, 258
Endless cycle, 259
Fateful history of a drop of

water, 260
Swamp life, 262
Ground water life, 262

Waterfall(s), 6, 27, 51
Waves, 40, 54, 108, 112
Weapons, 86
Wegener, A. L., 21, 22
West Indies, 74, 75 77. *3 2 , *33
Westphalia, 231
Whirlpool Rapids, 52
Wind(s), 30, 3 2 4O, 103, 108,

141
Wisconsin, 29, 105, 107, i45

185, 240, 251
Wolves, 57
Wood to coal, 226
Word(s), 69, 79, 94, 95 Il2 t

113

Writing, 95 i5, "* IX 5 I2 3
Wyoming, 25, 136, 216

Yangtze River, 254
Yellowstone, 7, 25
Yosemite Falls, 52
Yucatan, 74
Yukon Territory, 179

Zambesi River, 52
Zinc, 183, 185